HCL GUVI Partners with OpenAI to Integrate AI Tools Into Learning Programmes

HCL GUVI, an IIT Madras-incubated edtech platform now part of the HCL Group, has partnered with OpenAI at the close of the India Impact Buildathon at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

With the partnership, HCL GUVI will integrate OpenAI’s advanced AI tools and globally aligned development practices into its structured learning programmes.

Arun Prakash, Founder and CEO of HCL GUVI, said the initiative reflects a shift from experimentation to the development of production-ready capabilities. 

“Our collaboration with OpenAI represents the next phase of this journey, integrating global-grade infrastructure and best practices into India’s workforce ecosystem, enabling learners to move beyond experimentation toward production-ready solutions,” he said in a statement.

Balamurugan S P, Co-founder of HCL GUVI, added that the Buildathon was designed to rethink how technology talent is nurtured. “Our ‘Learn. Build. Compete.’ model ensures participants gain not only theoretical understanding but also practical confidence. The scale of participation across India highlights that high-quality technology talent exists everywhere; it simply requires the right platform and opportunity,” he said.

Held at Bharat Mandapam, Delhi, in collaboration with HCLTech, the Buildathon engaged over 40,000 participants across more than 15,000 teams from 100+ cities nationwide. Unlike traditional hackathons, the competition followed a structured training-first approach, where participants underwent guided learning before solving real-world challenges such as real-time voice detection during live calls and honeypot systems to track malicious actors.

Following nationwide online rounds, the top 200 teams advanced to the offline grand finale, where solutions were evaluated for deployability, scalability, and responsible design.

The event was inaugurated by Abhishek Singh, CEO of IndiaAI, Director General of the National Informatics Centre and Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, underscoring the government’s focus on scalable digital capability development.

Industry leaders and policymakers, including executives from HCLTech, AICTE, MongoDB, and SBI, participated as mentors and evaluators.

With the OpenAI partnership and national-scale training initiatives converging, HCL GUVI said it aims to strengthen India’s talent pipeline to meet growing enterprise demand for professionals capable of designing, deploying and scaling real-world AI systems.