IIT Delhi student wins World’s top coder contest; bags $10,000 reward

IIT Delhi student, Kalash Gupta has become the winner of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) flagship global coding contest- CodeVita Season 10. Over 100,000 participants had participated in this contest from 87 countries across the world. TCS CodeVita is a flagship global coding contest that holds the Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest computer programming competition. Kalash has received the grand prize of $10,000 by grabbing the first spot while the first and the second runners-up are awarded $7,000 and $3,000 respectively. The third runner up, Michal Stanik from Czech Republic, was also recognized by TCS with a prize of $1,000.

Furthermore, all the four winners also get an internship opportunity with TCS’ Research and Innovation organization. As many as 21 students from multiple Indian universities including IITs are featured in the list of World’s top coders. All these students have received calls from TCS for an interview and the four finalists get to solve all the 10 challenging coding problems. K Ananth Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer, TCS has said, “Season 10 of CodeVita has been remarkable in harnessing the passion for coding among the youth. We were thrilled to see how the four finalists solved all the 10 problems, which has never happened before.”

Winner Kalash had also secured 3rd rank in Joint Entrance exam (JEE) 2018 for admission to IITs. He was also the Delhi zone topper in the same exam. Talking about his experience, he is quoted by Times of India as saying, “When I started with the contest, I never thought I would even be in the top 3 but this is a very humbling experience. I’m very excited about the prize money.” He further added, “Initially I was not confident, as I took longer than I expected to solve the first problem. But as I progressed, solving some of the other problems, I gained more confidence over my final standing, and I was confident that I would be in the top 3.”