National Champion - HackFusion 2025 Hackathon

HackFusion National Hackathon · January 2025

Secured 1st place at HackFusion 2025, India's premier national-level hackathon, leading a team to develop the 'Admission & Enrollment Automation System' - a comprehensive 5-microservice ecosystem transforming educational administration

1st Place

National Ranking

5000+

Participants

500+

Teams Nationwide

24 Hours

Development Time

5

Microservices Built

1. Context and Objective

HackFusion 2025 presented an open-ended national problem statement: modernise and streamline admission and enrollment for educational institutions struggling with fragmented, manual processes. Objective: deliver a working, scalable proof-of-concept in 24 hours that demonstrates technical depth, reliability, and measurable administrative impact.

2. Problem Landscape

Current institutional workflows exhibit:

  • Paper-heavy intake and manual transcription
  • Delays during peak admission windows
  • Inconsistent document validation quality
  • No unified progress visibility for applicants or administrators
  • Repetitive FAQ traffic to support staff

3. Solution Overview

A vertically integrated admission and enrollment automation ecosystem composed of five independently deployable services working through well-defined APIs. Core capabilities: document digitisation, structured data extraction, workflow orchestration, conversational assistance, administrative oversight.

Architecture Summary

Layer Component Responsibility Tech Stack
Ingestion OCR Automation Pipeline Raw document conversion, text extraction, pre-processing Python, FastAPI, Gemini API
Extraction SLM Document Extraction Field-level semantic extraction and validation DistilBERT, TensorFlow, PyTorch
Orchestration Admission Management Platform Application lifecycle, status transitions, security Spring Boot, React, JWT
Assistance Scholaro ChatBot Real-time applicant Q&A, workflow guidance Node.js, Express, MongoDB
Administrative University Management System Operational configuration and oversight Full-Stack Web Stack

4. Design Principles

  1. Separation of concerns per service boundary
  2. Deterministic, versioned API contracts
  3. Stateless processing where possible for horizontal scaling
  4. Instrumented checkpoints for observability (processing stage, latency, extraction confidence)
  5. Security by default: authenticated endpoints, role segregation

5. Data & Processing Flow

  1. Applicant uploads document (PDF/Image)
  2. OCR pipeline standardises format and performs text layer construction
  3. Extractor model processes structured fields with confidence scoring
  4. Orchestrator validates completeness → advances workflow state
  5. Applicant & admin dashboards reflect real-time status
  6. Chatbot surfaces context-aware responses and reduces manual tickets

6. Selected Technical Decisions

Decision Rationale Trade-offs
Microservices over monolith Parallel team velocity; independent scaling Higher integration overhead
Lightweight DistilBERT variant Balance between inference speed and accuracy Slightly lower ceiling vs larger models
FastAPI for OCR service Async IO efficiency, rapid prototyping Requires careful tuning under load
Spring Boot for orchestration Mature ecosystem, security & data tooling Higher memory footprint
JWT-based auth Stateless session management Token revocation complexity

7. Implementation Footprint

Service Deployment Progression (Time-Ordered)

Hour Block Focus Output
1–3 Architecture alignment, repository scaffolds Shared contracts defined
4–8 OCR + extraction model integration Baseline inference pipeline operational
9–14 Orchestration service domain + auth Role & workflow model stable
15–19 Chatbot integration + context hooks FAQ reduction path validated
20–22 UI polishing + latency tuning < 1.2s avg extraction latency
23 Cross-service integration test All success paths green
24 Demo packaging & narrative Judge-ready scenario path

9. Outcome Metrics

95%

Extraction Accuracy

80%

Manual Handling Reduction

< 1.2s

Model Inference Latency

5

Composable Services

10. Differentiators

Architectural Strengths

Dimension Implementation Benefit
Isolation Service-per-core-function Failure containment
Observability Stage & confidence instrumentation Rapid diagnosis
Extensibility Contract-first APIs Faster feature addition
Performance Model/runtime balance Real-time usability
Security Role + token enforcement Controlled access

11. Repositories

Repository Scope Key Focus
OCR Automation Pipeline Document processing OCR + pre-processing
SLM Document Extraction AI inference Field semantics
College Admission Automation Core orchestration Workflow + auth
Scholaro ChatBot Conversational layer Contextual responses
University Management System Admin oversight Configuration UI

12. Leadership & Coordination

Role: Full-Stack Architect & Team Lead. Responsibilities included architectural definition, integration risk mitigation, API boundary negotiation, and delivery sequencing.

Coordination Timeline

Planning

Service decomposition, repository scaffolding, interface contracts.

Parallel Build

Independent implementation tracks with integration checkpoints every 4 hours.

Stabilisation

Latency tuning, inference reliability validation, error budget sizing.

Demonstration

Narrative alignment, scenario-driven walkthrough, metrics presentation.

13. Judge Commentary (Selected)

“Production-ready architecture depth uncommon in time-boxed environments.” – Lead Technical Judge
“Strong balance of AI capability, system design discipline, and clarity of delivery.” – Industry Panel Member

14. Forward Path

Planned next steps:

  • Pilot trial with an institutional partner
  • Additional model evaluation dataset expansion
  • Role-based analytics dashboard enhancement
  • Deployment hardening (rate limiting, circuit breaking)

15. Reference Snapshot

Competition Date: 15 Jan 2025
Achievement: National Champion (1st Place)
Development Window: 24 hours
Role: Full-Stack Architect & Team Lead