Hackathons
Inside 13Hacks, the First Sikh Hackathon — and the Startup That Won Its Venture Track
100+ builders from 9 states, 30 mentors, three days at UC Berkeley — and TruckMind, a transportation startup that walked away with the Venture Track. Here is what happened at the first Sikh hackathon.
In January 2026, United Sikh Movement did something no one had done before: it hosted a hackathon built by and for Sikh students. 13Hacks ran for three days, January 23–25, at UC Berkeley, and brought together 100+ attendees from 9 states and 30 mentors from across tech, startups, product, design, and finance.
It was the first Sikh-hosted hackathon in America. It will not be the last.
What 13Hacks was (and wasn't)
13Hacks was billed as the Sikh Innovation Sprint, and that framing mattered. It was open to all majors, with no coding experience required. Teams were built around a mix of skills — engineers, designers, business students, future lawyers — because that is what real companies look like.
Over the weekend, participants moved through:
- Team formation on day one
- Hands-on workshops on the skills they needed to build
- Late-night hacking
- Fireside chats and AMAs with mentors and community leaders
- Demos and final pitches in front of judges
The judges were Jagjot (JJ) Singh, Dilpreet Sahota, Sargun Kaur, and Navneet Kaur, and mentors included Sikh leaders across IT, cybersecurity, product, and startups. Organizers Gursimar Kaur, Puneet Kaur Cheema, and Harsimran Kaur ran the weekend.
The startup: TruckMind
The team that won the Venture Track was TruckMind, a unified transportation platform that brings dispatch, safety, compliance, and back-office automation into one system for carriers.
At 13Hacks, the team showcased TruckMind's safety compliance module, focused on do-it-yourself driver qualification (DQ) file management. The goal: help trucking carriers move off spreadsheets and reactive workflows toward safety operations that are self-serve and audit-ready — without relying on outside consultants.
In the team's own words after the event, the judges' feedback "reinforced our belief that safety compliance needs to be preventive, operator-friendly, and built for real-world use."
The TruckMind team at 13Hacks: Gurtej Sahota, Jugraj Singh, Parampreet Singh, Gurvir Virk, and Harpreet Kaur.
There is something fitting about it. Trucking is an industry where Sikh Americans have a large presence, and one many Sikh families know from the inside. A team of young Sikhs building modern software for it — and getting feedback from Sikh judges and mentors who understood both the tech and the industry — is exactly the kind of thing 13Hacks was designed to make possible.
Manshaan AI: a $2,000 prize
On the final day, team Manshaan AI took home a $2,000 prize, plus award plaques for every member. It was one of several winning teams from a weekend where the bar for pitches was high.
First place: "be delusional"
Another winning team, DevRamp, took first place with a lesson worth repeating. Team member Bhajneek Anand, a data science student at UCSD, wrote afterward that it was his first hackathon, and that one judge's advice stuck: be delusional — in your vision, and in what you want to achieve.
His biggest takeaway was not technical:
If you're not technical, stop forcing yourself to code. Work on the pitch. Focus on the design. Map out the business model. Do what you're actually good at.
His team won, he said, because they fully understood their product's market, competitors, and customers. "Technical execution mattered, but conviction and clarity won the judges over."
If you have never done a hackathon and that sounds like something you could do, we wrote a whole guide: How to do your first hackathon with no coding experience.
Why a Sikh hackathon?
Because Sikh students belong at the front of technical innovation, and a community built around them can help them get there.
Hackathons are where a lot of people get their first internship lead, first co-founder, or first taste of building something real. But plenty of students never go, because they assume they are not "technical enough," or they do not know anyone going. 13Hacks removed both barriers: no coding required, and a room full of people who share your values.
In the words of the USM team afterward: 13Hacks was proof of what is possible when we create spaces that are both values-driven and opportunity-rich.
What's next
13Hacks 2027 is coming. Join the list below to hear first. And if you are in the Bay Area this fall, the same energy is going professional at SYNC, the Sikh space at SF Tech Week.