Atlas AI Labs wins the CSI Hyderabad Best Startup Award 2025–26, six months after founding
Computer Society of India (CSI), Hyderabad Chapter · CSI Annual Excellence Awards · Hyderabad
Best Startup 2025–26
Atlas AI Labs won the Best Startup Award 2025–26 from the Computer Society of India, Hyderabad Chapter, six months after we started, for sovereign, research-first AI: T-RACE ONE, AOLP, GCT-100K and KiranaChain.
Atlas AI Labs won the Best Startup Award 2025–26 from the CSI Hyderabad Chapter, six months after we started.
When we founded Atlas AI Labs, most of what we saw around us were chatbot wrappers on top of someone else's API: fast to ship, fast to fund, fast to fade. We chose the harder path.
What we built instead
- T-RACE ONE: an offline OSINT identity intelligence platform for cybersecurity and digital forensics, running entirely on local infrastructure. No cloud dependency; no data leaving the system.
- AOLP: a framework on agent lineage and autonomy.
- GCT-100K: a benchmark for social engineering threats.
- KiranaChain: a dataset modelling India's informal retail economy.
None of it was designed to go viral. All of it was designed to matter.
The bet
My honest takeaway as a fourth-year engineering student running a startup: sovereign, research-first AI is slower to build and harder to explain in a pitch meeting. But it compounds, and it earns trust a wrapper never will. This award isn't proof that we've made it; it's proof the bet is working.
In the papers
The award was covered in the Hyderabad press, in English (12 July 2026, page 5: "Vasavi College of Engineering student-led startup wins CSI Hyderabad Best Startup Award 2025–26") and in Telugu (11 July 2026). Both clippings are in the gallery below.
Gratitude
To my team, Dhatri Mididuddi, Biradar Amulya and Manikanta Reddy Maram; our faculty mentors Jithender Reddy and Narsaiah Putta; and Vasavi College of Engineering, for backing a vision that took the long way.
To other builders: are you optimising for speed to market, or speed to trust?
