11th September marked the anniversary of our annual tech-fest – Esya. Esya is a wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary event spanning over two days. The event keeps our campus bustling with technology aficionados from all over Delhi, be it college or school students. The fest has a little bit of something for everyone; from Robot wars to comedy night, the fest covers it all. Last year, we even had the honour of hosting the renowned comedian Rahul Subramanian at our college stage.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic situation this year, we weren’t able to continue with hosting a college-wide fest. However, that didn’t assuage the spirit and the creative minds of our students. In order to keep the festive spirit alive and to carry forward the legacy of Esya the Cultural Council of IIIT-Delhi planned a HuntIt competition for all the members of the IIIT-Delhi community – past and present alike. HuntIt is the flagship event of Esya which sees competitors hobbling around the campus and sometimes even through the city solving clues in a race against time.

This year, the Cultural Council introduced the HuntIt competition in a virtual medium. Participants were given 3 hours to finish 7 clues to win some really amazing prices. For the first 4 rounds, each question had 4 different sets just so that the participants could be sent off on different trails. The really committed members of the council thus created various possible trails that could be followed.

The event saw an overwhelming response with a participation of more than 370 students. The students were not limited to just the B.Tech. students but also included M.Tech. students, PhDs and the alumni of our college. The participants were provided with a leaderboard with live updates to keep the competitive oil burning. As and when more teams advanced to the next round, the leaderboard was updated.

The event also introduced in its first round – Roblox. Roblox is a virtual reality platform which the council used to host a virtual environment of the college that could help participants experience the college nostalgia virtually, if not physically. There were clue codes hidden all over the virtual representation of the Student Centre as well as the Sports Block of the campus. A lot of participants got swept up in nostalgia and used it as an opportunity to just roam around the campus and have fun with their friends, forgetting all about the hunt.

We congratulate the winners of this event! It is only fair to say that the event was a big success and we can only hope to see many more creative initiatives from our student body who never fail to surprise us.

Blog By: Riya Singh, B.Tech. CSD