The flagship innovation program engaged over 14,500 engineering students from 357 colleges, transforming classroom learning into enterprise-ready AI innovation.

Mumbai, India: Virtusa Corporation, a global leader in product and platform engineering services, today announced the successful conclusion of the fifth edition of Jatayu, its flagship national virtual ideathon programme designed to nurture emerging technology talent across India’s engineering colleges.

Centred on the theme of Agentic AI, Jatayu Season 5 brought together some of the country’s brightest engineering students to solve real-world business challenges using next-generation AI technologies. In its fifth year, Jatayu has evolved into one of Virtusa’s largest campus innovation initiatives, bringing together students, academia and industry experts to collaborate on enterprise AI innovation. This year’s edition saw participation from 357 engineering colleges, with 2,926 teams comprising over 14,576 students competing to solve 14 enterprise problem statements developed by seven of Virtusa’s Strategic Business Units.

Conducted across three evaluation rounds, the competition challenged participants to transform ideas into working solutions under the guidance of Virtusa mentors, providing hands-on experience in applying Agentic AI to real-world enterprise challenges while strengthening their technical, problem-solving and collaboration skills.

From the thousands of participants, 27 finalist teams representing 116 students earned a place at the Grand Finale, where they presented their solutions to a panel of Virtusa technology leaders and industry experts. Alverse was named the winner of Jatayu Season 5, while Housestark secured the first runner-up position and JustAgentic finished as the second runner-up. The winning team received full-time employment opportunities at Virtusa along with cash prizes, recognising not only technical excellence but also creativity, collaboration and the ability to solve complex business problems through AI.

Speaking on the occasion, Venkatesan Vijayaraghavan, Chief Operating Officer of Virtusa said, ” Jatayu has always been about giving students an opportunity to apply what they learn in the classroom to real business challenges. Each year, we see participants bring fresh ideas, curiosity and technical skills to solve problems that are relevant to today’s enterprises. This season’s focus on Agentic AI encouraged students to explore how autonomous AI systems can improve business processes and decision-making. The quality of solutions presented this year reflects the growing maturity of AI talent emerging from India’s engineering ecosystem, and we are pleased to play a role in supporting that journey.”

Over the past five editions, Jatayu has continued to strengthen collaboration between academia and industry by giving engineering students practical exposure to enterprise technologies and business problem-solving. As organizations increasingly adopt AI to improve efficiency, decision-making and customer experiences, programmes like Jatayu play an important role in preparing students for the evolving demands of the technology industry. Looking ahead, Virtusa will continue to invest in initiatives that enable aspiring engineers to work on emerging technologies, learn from industry experts and solve real business challenges, helping them build the skills, confidence and practical experience needed to shape the next generation of AI-powered enterprise solutions.