🏆 From Code to Glory: Our Journey as Runner-Up at India’s First Agentforce Hackathon

There are moments in your tech career that make you pause, smile, and say: “This is why I love what I do.” For me, that moment came when my team was announced as the Runner-Up at the first-ever Agentforce Hackathon in India during TDX, securing a jaw-dropping grand prize of ₹3 million.

Why I decided to participate?

As a tech enthusiast who lives and breathes code, the idea of participating in a hackathon where innovation, problem-solving, and rapid prototyping come together was thrilling. What made it even more special was that this was India’s first Agentforce Hackathon—a first-time opportunity I couldn’t resist. The excitement of being part of a groundbreaking Salesforce event in my own country was the perfect push I needed.

The Idea: Real Problems, Real Solutions

Our project was designed to address real-world pain points for customers, agents, and businesses in the vehicle rental space. We built an end-to-end vehicle booking solution where:

Customers could book or cancel a vehicle directly from a company's website through an embedded Agentforce service agent.
Dealers could manage, approve, or complete bookings right from Slack.

In short, we streamlined the entire vehicle rental process to take just a few minutes, creating a seamless experience for both ends of the spectrum.

The Tech Stack: Powered by Salesforce

To bring our vision to life, we used:

Sales Cloud for managing bookings and interactions.
Experience Cloud for customer-facing portals.
Slack for dealer communication and task management.
Data Cloud to handle and sync data effectively.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for intelligent search and service enhancements.

The Team Behind the Magic

I had the honor of working with two incredibly talented individuals:

Kapil Batra – Our fearless team captain and Mastermind behind the solution.
Jyothsna Bitra – A powerhouse of ideas and execution.
And myself, Monika Ramchandani – Bringing the vision to life with code, integration and logic.

Despite being only three people, we played to our strengths, communicated constantly, and supported each other through every challenge. Whether it was debating architecture choices at 3 a.m. or re-recording a demo under time pressure, we had each other’s backs.

What truly made our team special was the shared mindset: We weren’t there just to win. We were there to build something that mattered.

30 Hours, 2 Hours of Sleep, Infinite Memories

The hackathon was intense - 30 hours of coding, collaboration, and caffeine, with just 2 hours of sleep. One of the biggest hurdles was the demo video requirement. We had just 20 minutes to record and then edit it ourselves. The catch? We had to squeeze the architecture, pitch deck, and full demo into just 5 minutes. Talk about pressure!

The Big Moment

Out of 180 competing teams, hearing our names called as the Runner-Up felt surreal. It was a mix of pride, disbelief, and immense joy. The second day of the event was chaotic, with nerves running high—but in the end, all the hard work paid off.

Bonus Highlight: A Feature on Salesforce+

As if winning wasn’t exciting enough, our team was invited to give an interview on Salesforce+, the official media platform of Salesforce! Getting to share our story, approach, and vision on such a respected stage was an honor we’ll cherish forever.

You can check the winner's team and runner's up interview here

The Grand Prize

Winning ₹3 million was the icing on the cake. While it was never about the money, the reward feels incredibly satisfying. As a team, we’re grateful - and still brainstorming the best way to use it meaningfully.

Takeaways & Advice

Biggest Takeaway:
Innovation thrives where real-world problems meet passion and purpose. The hackathon reinforced that great ideas, when backed by teamwork and the right technology, can move mountains—even in just 30 hours.

My Advice to Future Hackathon Participants:

Solve a real problem. Judges resonate with practical, user-centered solutions.
Keep the user journey simple. A clean, clear UX can make or break your demo.
Prepare for the unexpected. Time pressure, tech hiccups, or nerves—stay adaptable.
Choose the right people. Your team is your biggest strength.

Being a runner-up at the first Agentforce Hackathon in India is a milestone I’ll never forget. It was more than a competition - it was a celebration of innovation, grit, and the incredible community that makes Salesforce so powerful.

Here’s to more late-night coding, caffeine-fueled breakthroughs, and the joy of turning ideas into impact. 💙

Checkout the solution we created -