Emly Labs, in collaboration with Government College for Women, MA Road, Srinagar, organised Emly AI OpenHack 2026 – Open Source Edition 1.0.
As per a press release, the two-day event brought together students, developers, designers, researchers and problem-solvers to build practical solutions for real challenges faced by people and institutions in Kashmir.
The hackathon focussed on areas including tourism, transport, agriculture, finance, education, environment, public safety and civic services. Participants work on local problem statements such as school bus safety, Dal Lake cleanliness tracking, pesticide authentication for farmers, tourist and traffic information tools, financial literacy for young learners, and open directories of local resources and opportunities.
The aim of the initiative is to move beyond ideas and presentations. Teams will develop working prototypes, publish their projects as open source, and create solutions that can be reused, improved and taken forward by students, communities, institutions and future contributors.
The opening day included the launch of the problem statements, team onboarding and expert sessions, followed by development and mentoring. On the second day, shortlisted teams presented their solutions before an expert jury, followed by the announcement and felicitation of the winning teams.
Speaking about the initiative, Monis Khan, CEO, Emly Labs, said: “Kashmir has many problems that require local understanding. Through OpenHack, we want students to solve these problems with simple and practical solutions and keep their work open so that others can continue building on it.” The event was supported by industry, academic and domain experts and is designed to create a long-term open-source ecosystem of local projects, tools and datasets for Kashmir.
