Dharmendra Pradhan launches Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025 for school students

A prize pool of ₹1 crore has been earmarked for the Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025, which will be shared among 1,000 district-level teams, 100 state-level teams, and 10 national winners

Updated on: Sep 23, 2025, 18:37:30 IST

By Sanjay Maurya

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New Delhi: Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday unveiled ‘Viksit Bharat Buildathon 2025’, a nationwide innovation drive aimed at engaging 5 crore students from classes 6 to 12 across more than 3 lakh schools.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan (right) with secretary of the Department of School Education and Literacy Sanjay Kumar (left) during the launch of 'Viksit Bharat Buildathon', in New Delhi, on Tuesday. (PTI)

The joint initiative of Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) under the Education Ministry and NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is aimed at encouraging students to ideate, design, and build prototypes of the products around four themes — vocal for local, atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India), swadeshi (Indigenous), and samriddh Bharat (prosperous India) in alignment with the vision of Viksit Bharat (Developed India) at 2047.

“The viksit Bharat buildathon will strengthen the culture of innovation at the grassroots by encouraging students to ideate and build products on four themes. The initiative will celebrate student innovations, engineer an innovation renaissance in the country, and ensure that the young generations become key drivers of samriddhi, viksit, and atmanirbhar Bharat,” Pradhan said.

Under the initiative, students can register on the VBB portal (https://vbb.mic.gov.in/) between September 23 and October 6. Schools will then have a preparation week (October 6 to 13), during which teachers will mentor teams of 5 to 7 students to shape their ideas. A live two-hour innovation event is scheduled for October 13, in which students will brainstorm their ideas, after which teams can submit final entries until October 31. Expert evaluation of submissions will take place from November 1 to December 31, and the Buildathon will conclude in January 2026 with the announcement and felicitation of over 1,000 winners.

A prize pool of ₹1 crore has been earmarked for the VBB which will be shared among 1,000 district-level teams, 100 state-level teams, and 10 national winners.

“The buildathon aims to inspire creative thinking for national development, promote self-reliance and sustainable growth, engage schools in synchronized innovation, project India as a global innovation capital through a potential world record, and celebrate young problem-solvers on national and global platforms,” Sanjay Kumar, DoSEL secretary said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanjay Maurya
Sanjay Maurya is a Principal Correspondent with Hindustan Times, where he covers education, with a focus on school and higher education, competitive examinations, education policy and governance. Working as part of the National Bureau, he is based in New Delhi and reports on the Ministry of Education and covers various statutory bodies like UGC, AICTE and NCTE and autonomous bodies like CBSE and NCERT. His reporting also tracks the implementation of key government reforms and policies from school education to higher education including in IITs, NITs, IIMs, central and state universities, and their impact on students and educational institutions. His reporting on the irregularities and rushed implementation of CBSE's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for evaluation of Class 12 board exams 2026, triggered administrative action, leading to the transfer of the board's two senior-most officials and the constitution of a committee to probe alleged irregularities in procurement process of the system. He joined Hindustan Times in December 2024. Prior to that, he had a three-year stint at Careers360, where he reported on school and higher education, entrance examinations, admissions, rankings and various education policies involving universities and professional education bodies. Over the years, Maurya has reported extensively on major developments in India's education sector, including the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, reforms in the National Testing Agency (NTA) following the NEET-UG 2024 controversy, changes in school education, higher education regulation, and the evolution of entrance examinations such as NEET, JEE and CUET. He regularly produces data-driven and explanatory stories based on government documents, parliamentary proceedings, court records and official data. His focus remains on helping readers understand how education policies and institutional decisions affect millions of students, teachers and educational institutions across the country.Read More

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