Rishul Chanana, a 17-year-old Indian founder, is building Maximally, a fast-growing hackathon platform redefining how innovation events are organized across India. What began as a response to chaotic, inconsistent hackathon experiences has evolved into a full-stack hackathon infrastructure system now trusted by schools, colleges, startups, communities, and a growing network of over 15,000 builders around the world.

Today, when someone thinks, “I want to host a hackathon,” more and more people think Maximally — a platform that is slowly becoming the operating system behind modern hackathons.

How Rishul Chanana Started Building Maximally’s Hackathon Platform

Before founding Maximally, Rishul Chanana spent years inside India’s hackathon ecosystem as a participant, volunteer, and organizer. The deeper he went, the more he noticed an uncomfortable truth: hackathons were exciting on paper, but chaotic behind the scenes.

He repeatedly saw:

broken or overloaded submission portals
judges joining late or struggling with evaluation criteria
mentor pipelines with no structure
disorganized WhatsApp groups replacing real communication
rushed branding that didn’t match the event’s ambition
organizers burning out from confusion and lack of standards

Most people accepted this chaos as “just how hackathons work.”

Rishul didn’t.

Instead of running events on patchwork tools and last-minute planning, he decided to rebuild the entire system from scratch — with proper standards, templates, playbooks, and infrastructure.

Maximally: The Operating System for Hackathons

Today, Maximally gives hackathon organizers a complete suite of systems that transform messy events into predictable, professionally run experiences.

The platform provides:

submissions + judging infrastructure
mentor onboarding and management pipelines
sponsor outreach playbooks and reporting formats
branding and design frameworks
operations workflows and checklists
co-organizing support for schools, colleges, and communities
templates for every event format (24-hour, weekend, weeklong, monthlong)
visibility across the Maximally community

With these components, Maximally replaces the traditional scramble with a structure that scales.

Organizers no longer start from zero; they plug into a system that already works.

This is why Maximally has become one of India’s most recognizable hackathon brands — not because of massive prize pools, but because events run smoother, faster, and with higher energy than typical college or community hackathons.

15,000 Builders Across the Maximally Network

Under Rishul Chanana’s leadership, Maximally has already supported over 15,000 builders — an impressive scale for a platform still led by a teenager.

These builders have participated across:

Maximally’s own hackathons
partnered community events
school and college hackathons
online and global challenge formats
themed innovation sprints
multi-day and month-long programs

Participants come from:

India
the United States
Europe
Southeast Asia
the Middle East
and dozens of global student communities

Maximally has quietly become a hub for young innovators — student developers, creative technologists, AI tinkerers, indie hackers, and early founders who want high-quality, high-energy hackathon experiences.

Every new participant strengthens the community, and every event reinforces the standards Maximally is building.

A Global Mentor & Judge Network: From Google to Warner Bros Discovery

One of Maximally’s defining strengths is its access to credible mentors and judges. The platform has collaborated with professionals from:

Google
Microsoft
Meta
AWS
McKinsey
Warner Bros Discovery
Atlassian
Oracle
Visa
FedEx
Replit
Intuit
ADP
Fig
Graphite Health
MakeX

These individuals don’t join low-quality events. They join events that are structured and well-run — and Maximally has earned that reputation.

Mentors appreciate the clarity.

Judges appreciate the consistency.

Participants appreciate the exposure.

This network is one of the reasons Maximally has grown so quickly.

MFHOP: The Federation for Hackathon Organizers

As Maximally scaled, Rishul Chanana realized that the hackathon community had an even deeper problem: organizers across India were not connected.

Every college, school, and community organizer worked in isolation — building their own rules, systems, and processes, often making the same mistakes others had already solved.

To fix this, Rishul launched MFHOP — the Maximally Federation of Hackathon Organizers and Partners.

MFHOP exists to:

share standardized playbooks and workflows
distribute sponsor relationships across organizers
provide a shared pool of mentors and judges
create a common scoring and submissions framework
support cross-event partnerships
foster discussions within the organizer community
reduce friction and raise quality across the country

This federation creates a network effect: organizers grow when the ecosystem grows.

With MFHOP, Maximally isn’t just a platform.

It’s becoming the backbone of the hackathon ecosystem.

Maximally’s Signature Creative Hackathons

Maximally is known for more than its infrastructure — it’s known for its vibe.

These hackathons are not copy-paste events with predictable posters and generic themes. Maximally’s events are cinematic, energetic, story-driven, and visually distinct.

Some of its signature formats include:

Startup Makeathon — where teams build and validate real startup ideas
AI Shipathon — an AI-first sprint focused on shipping functional products
CodeGen — a generative AI creativity challenge
PromptStorm — a high-speed LLM prompt engineering battle
Protocol 404 — cybersecurity and system design under pressure
Codepocalypse — a chaotic, content-heavy hackathon with a unique narrative
Hacktober — seasonal community-wide coding challenges
Grand Tech Assembly — a multi-theme innovation festival
Steal-A-Thon — a playful challenge encouraging idea remixing

Each hackathon has its own identity: moodboards, pacing, themes, and an aesthetic that stands out in a feed full of repetitive event banners.

This creativity drives engagement — and makes Maximally memorable.

Why Institutions Choose Maximally

Schools, colleges, communities, and startups increasingly choose Maximally because the platform brings:

predictability and professionalism
better participation and engagement
access to credible mentors and judges
standardized submissions and scoring
modern branding and communication frameworks
smoother event operations
ready-made templates and repeatable processes
visibility across a trusted builder network

Instead of spending weeks figuring out logistics, organizers can plug their event directly into Maximally’s ecosystem.

It’s hackathons-as-a-service — delivering quality without the typical chaos.

What Drives Rishul Chanana

Many teenagers build passion projects.

Rishul Chanana is building infrastructure — something far more ambitious.

His motivation is straightforward:

“When someone thinks hackathon, they think Maximally.”

He thrives on systems, templates, pace, and community-building.

He’s part builder, part operator, part storyteller — and that combination has allowed him to scale Maximally far beyond what most expect from a 17-year-old founder.

His mindset isn’t short-term.

He’s building a layer — not an event brand.