Synopsis
In Bengaluru, hacker houses like The Residency are turning into live-in labs where young developers build AI startups while living together. Backed by active VC interest, these spaces and evolving hackathons are shaping a new generation of full-stack builders focused on real-world products, experimentation, and launching ideas into businesses.Downtempo music plays softly in the background as residents move between workstations and common areas in what is emerging as a new kind of startup lab: a hacker house. At one point, a resident casually orders a milkshake from the house kitchen through an internal app using digital coins which get credited monthly. The three-storey penthouse of The Residency has everything from a small gym to a recreational area, and a terrace where residents often gather in the evenings to watch the sunset and talk through ideas and trends in AI.
Mirroring Silicon Valley
When ET visited this space on a Tuesday afternoon, about 20 developers barely out of their teens sat on bean bags running through on how to present their products at the upcoming demo day on March 27. The pitches target venture capital (VC) funds and angel investors that have turned to hacker houses for their pre-seed rounds. Some that have already visited include Antler India, Lightspeed and Together Fund.
“Builders here are deeply connected to what’s happening in San Francisco and the global AI ecosystem. Hacker houses are becoming the new hotspot for early-stage talent. VCs are actively scouting these spaces,” said Yuvraj Aaditya, 25, India lead at The Residency.
The set-up at The Residency and Localhost and HackerSpace in Bengaluru and Mumbai mirrors Silicon Valley’s hacker houses, where young developers live together, share resources and experiment with new ideas. These seemingly ordinary apartments are where India’s next generation of AI builders live, collaborate and launch early-stage products.
Take 22-year-old Saiprasad Pandilwar, for instance. He is in his final year at Vellore Institute of Technology and living at a hacker house building his startup MyPerro. A team of 10 people is working on building AI-powered smart collars that can monitor a dog’s health in real time, helping detect early symptoms.
A 3D printer sits above the workstation, allowing residents to prototype and build hardware alongside their software projects
The developers are trying to solve varied problems, passionately ready to pitch if one can spare a few minutes. One team is building tools to help Union Public Service Commission aspirants study more efficiently through AI videos. Another is working on products that simplify investing for first-time users. Some are experimenting with micro-video platforms, while others are building agentic AI assistants that can recommend eateries around and automate routine tasks.
A resident at The Residency in Bengaluru pays Rs 40,000 per month for a shared room and Rs 80,000 for an individual one.
The shift
Hacker houses are just one piece of the AI pie, as old-school hackathons are also transforming as AI gets embedded into everything – from services to products.
Weekly demo days where residents present what they’ve built, rule one- show don't tell.
The concept of “predefined problem statements”, or ‘trackers’ in developer lingo, for a prize is dying.
“To be very prescriptive (on problem statements) is probably not a great idea because you are basically limiting the scope of what people can do. I think we should let them be free and come with their own conviction,” said Vivek Raghavan, cofounder of Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI. The startup said it also scouts for talents at hackathons.
“We’re seeing many companies run hackathons around their own platforms, both externally and internally, to surface new use cases rather than just build demos,” said Dev Khare, partner at Lightspeed, adding that this has been a point in case in San Francisco but is also witnessing more activity in India. He acknowledged that hacker houses are also mushrooming.
In the past six to eight months, firms such as Lightspeed, Accel, Sarvam AI and Wingify founder Paras Chopra’s Lossfunk signal a broader shift in how early-stage tech gets built.
Build-a-thons
A quick search showed that major cities host five to 10 AI build-a-thons per week.
“The hackathons I’ve been participating in and organising recently give builders everything they could possibly need in 24, 36, or 48 hours. Compute credits, APIs (application programming interfaces), cloud access, even mentorship,” said developer Surya Maddula, 18.
He added that the deliverable has to have real users or generate revenue.
“Before Covid, back-end and front-end roles were separate. Now, if you want to be hired as a developer, you’re expected to be full-stack. You need to know front-end, back-end, APIs, databases, AI integration," said Priyanshu Ghosh, a former resident at Lossfunk who was previously associated with Perplexity AI and is now building his own startup. Developers today also need to talk to clients directly, he added.
OpenClaw (Moltbook), for instance, went viral for its agent-to-agent conversation in January. “Within two days of gaining traction, US developers organised independent hackathons around Moltbook – not to fix gaps with a problem statement in hand, but to explore what could be built on top of it,” said Natasha Malpani, founder of venture capital firm Boundless Ventures.
Developers and hackers also spoke about a new trend: hackathons becoming hardware-led. Software is easy and saturated with just a laptop and Wi-Fi, they said, but now there are hackathons where organising companies give money to buy components and build physical products. “Hardware feels more exciting to many new founders,” said one of them, who did not wish to be identified.
OpenClaw, earlier known as Moltbook and now acquired by OpenAI, also hosted an exclusive showcase in India in collaboration with Peak XV by GrowthX, inviting builders to present what they’ve built and shipped using the platform.
Venture fund-Accel, also hosted ‘Dev Day Community Showcase’ in partnership with Anthropic in Bengaluru which provided a platform for startups to interact with tech leaders.
Big tech companies including Google, IBM and Nvidia, as well as AI firms such as OpenAI and Perplexity AI are also hosting such events to build solutions on top of existing technologies.
