Terms & Conditions

1. Acceptance of these terms

By registering for, participating in, or submitting a project to the SerpApi India Hackathon (the “Hackathon”), each participant agrees to these Terms & Conditions, the Hackathon Rules, and applicable provisions of SerpApi's legal terms.

If a participant is part of a team, that participant accepts these terms individually. A person who does not agree, or who cannot legally agree, may not participate or receive an award.

2. Organizer and event

The Hackathon is organized by SerpApi, LLC (“SerpApi,” “we,” “us,” or “Organizer”) with promotional and community support from participating communities.

Community partners are not responsible for administering the Hackathon, judging projects, paying awards, or making eligibility decisions unless SerpApi expressly states otherwise in writing.

The Hackathon begins September 1, 2026 at 00:00 Indian Standard Time and ends October 5, 2026 at 23:59 Indian Standard Time. Judging and winner-announcement dates will be announced on the Hackathon website.

3. Participation and eligibility

Participation is limited to individuals age 18 or older who reside in India and meet every other eligibility requirement in the Hackathon Rules.

Participants are responsible for the accuracy of all eligibility and team information. SerpApi may require documentation and may reject or disqualify a participant or project when information is incomplete, false, misleading, unverifiable, or inconsistent with these terms.

Participation does not create an employment, agency, partnership, joint venture, fiduciary, or confidential relationship between SerpApi and any participant, team, or community partner.

Sanctions, export control, and anti-corruption

Each participant represents that neither the participant nor, to the participant’s knowledge, any team member is identified on a restricted-, denied-, or sanctioned-party list administered by the United States, India, the United Nations, or any other applicable authority, or ordinarily resident in a country or territory subject to comprehensive trade sanctions, and that no participant will offer or provide anything of value to a SerpApi employee, contractor, or judge to influence eligibility, judging, or award decisions. SerpApi may reject, disqualify, or decline to make an award to any participant or project where participation or award fulfillment would violate applicable export control, sanctions, or anti-corruption law.

4. Submissions and intellectual property

Participant responsibility

Participants are solely responsible for their project, repository, code, content, data, documentation, demo, statements, and third-party dependencies. Each participant represents that the submission may lawfully be submitted, evaluated, demonstrated, and displayed as contemplated by the Hackathon.

Account and submission management

A GitHub-authenticated account is required to submit a project through the Hackathon website. The account owner is responsible for the accuracy of the project and team information entered through that account.

Each account may keep up to three active projects, including drafts and submitted entries. Deleting a project frees space for another. A draft is not a submission and will not be submitted automatically. The participant must complete and submit it before the deadline. The original submission timestamp is retained when a submitted entry is edited.

Saved drafts may be edited at any time. SerpApi will not review, judge, or award a project that remains in draft status when submissions close.

Ownership

As between the participant and SerpApi, the participant retains ownership of the participant's original project materials. These terms do not transfer ownership of a participant's project to SerpApi.

License needed to run the Hackathon

By submitting a project, each participant grants SerpApi and its service providers a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to access, reproduce, run, test, evaluate, review, display, excerpt, and communicate the submission for Hackathon administration, judging, security review, winner announcements, reporting, and Hackathon promotion. This license includes use of the submitted project name, screenshots, demo excerpts, repository materials, and participant or team names for those purposes. This license is perpetual, irrevocable, and sublicensable to SerpApi’s affiliates and service providers, and continues after the Hackathon ends for so long as reasonably necessary for the promotional and administrative purposes described above. The license also extends to a participant’s name, likeness, voice, image, and biographical statements captured in the submitted project, demo video, or any Hackathon-related photograph or recording, for use in Hackathon-related promotion without further compensation or consent.

Third-party materials and open source

Third-party software and content remain subject to their respective licenses and terms. Participants must provide required notices and must not submit material that infringes intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, confidentiality, or other rights. Open-source licensing of participant-created code is encouraged but is not required unless a selected track or upstream integration requires it.

No confidentiality

Project repositories, demonstrations, and other materials intended for judging must be publicly accessible. Participants must not include trade secrets, credentials, API keys, private personal information, or other confidential material in those public materials. Participants are solely responsible for the content of their public submissions and SerpApi has no duty to treat public submission materials as confidential.

Similar or independently developed content

Neither the participation in the Hackathon nor the submission of a project will create any confidential, fiduciary, or exclusive relationship. SerpApi and its judges may already be developing, or may independently develop, features or products similar to a participant’s submission. Nothing in these terms restricts SerpApi from developing, licensing, or launching similar functionality, and a participant’s submission does not obligate SerpApi to use, credit, license, or compensate the participant for any idea, feature, or approach it contains beyond the awards described in these terms.

5. Judging and winner selection

SerpApi may screen submissions for eligibility, completeness, accessibility, security, relevance, and compliance before substantive judging. SerpApi may use automated or programmatic review to organize or prioritize submissions, followed by manual review.

Eligible projects are considered using the criteria described in the Rules: idea strength, originality, technical complexity, usefulness, and meaningful SerpApi usage. The criteria do not have fixed percentage weights unless SerpApi publishes an amendment.

SerpApi may select judges, request clarification, verify functionality, reclassify a project into a different track, resolve ties, decline to select a winner in a category, or select an alternate when a potential winner is ineligible or fails verification.

6. Prizes and search credits

Awards are described on the Hackathon prize page and in the Rules. Awards are granted per project submission. For team submissions, award fulfillment arrangements will be confirmed during winner verification.

A project may receive only one competitive award. Valid-submission credits are a participation benefit and may be provided in addition to a competitive award.

Skill-based contest:

The Hackathon is a skill-based competition in which winners are determined by the judging criteria described in the Rules. It is not a lottery, sweepstakes, or game of chance, and no purchase, payment, or consideration is required to enter or win.

Before fulfillment, a potential winner must provide requested identity, residency, age, banking, tax, account, and compliance information within the time specified by SerpApi. Failure to respond or complete verification may result in forfeiture or reassignment.

Cash awards may be subject to applicable taxes, deductions, reporting, or withholding. Participants are responsible for taxes and financial obligations not withheld by SerpApi. Search credits have no cash value, are non-transferable unless SerpApi approves otherwise, may expire, and remain subject to SerpApi account and service terms.

SerpApi may substitute an award with an item or benefit of reasonably comparable value, adjust fulfillment timing, or decline an award where required by law, compliance obligations, sanctions, payment limitations, fraud concerns, or circumstances outside SerpApi's reasonable control. A participant may not demand or request a substitute prize or cash equivalent.

7. Changes, suspension, and cancellation

SerpApi may change these terms, the Rules, schedule, tracks, eligibility process, submission method, judging process, award structure, community-partner list, or any other Hackathon element when SerpApi determines that operational, legal, security, fairness, technical, financial, or other circumstances warrant a change.

SerpApi may extend, shorten, postpone, suspend, restart, or cancel the Hackathon in whole or in part. This includes cancellation or modification because of insufficient participation, technical failure, fraud, abuse, force majeure, changes in law, partner availability, safety concerns, or events that compromise fair or practical operation.

When reasonably practicable, material updates will be published on the Hackathon website. Continued participation after an update constitutes acceptance of the updated terms to the extent permitted by applicable law. If the Hackathon is cancelled, SerpApi may determine whether any submitted projects will still be reviewed or receive recognition or awards.

8. Publicity, communications, and privacy

Participants understand that selected submission information—including participant or team names, project title, description, repository, screenshots, and demo—may be published through the Hackathon website, winner announcements, and Hackathon promotion. Participant email addresses and the lead participant's mobile number are collected for event administration and are not intended for public display. Occupation and years of experience are collected for internal analytics only and are not intended for public display.

SerpApi may contact participants about submission validity, technical support, judging, awards, Hackathon updates, and related administration using the contact information provided. A separate optional checkbox allows a participant to request email about future SerpApi hackathons and competitions; that choice does not affect eligibility or judging and may be changed by contacting SerpApi.

SerpApi records account identifiers, form responses, acceptance timestamps, the original submission time, later updates, and deletion status as reasonably needed to administer the Hackathon, enforce submission limits, prevent abuse, resolve disputes, and meet legal obligations. Service providers used to operate the submission system may process this information on SerpApi's behalf.

Information processed through SerpApi services is subject to the applicable privacy provisions available on SerpApi's legal page. Third-party services such as GitHub, Google Drive, and YouTube process data under their own terms and privacy policies. Personal information of participants who reside in India is processed in accordance with applicable Indian data-protection law, including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, in addition to SerpApi’s general privacy provisions.

9. Disclaimers and responsibility

The Hackathon, website, participant support, SerpApi credits, and related materials are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. SerpApi does not promise uninterrupted access, compatibility with every project, a minimum number of awards, commercial success, or any particular outcome.

Participants assume responsibility for development costs, equipment, connectivity, third-party services, project security, legal compliance, and the decision to participate. SerpApi is not responsible for late, lost, corrupted, inaccessible, incomplete, or misdirected submissions caused by participant error or third-party systems.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the limitations of liability, warranty disclaimers, prohibited-use provisions, indemnity provisions, and other relevant clauses in SerpApi's Terms of Service apply to use of SerpApi websites, accounts, APIs, credits, and optional tools during the Hackathon.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, SerpApi and its affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, judges, and community partners will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill, or opportunity, arising out of or relating to the Hackathon or these terms, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, SerpApi’s total aggregate liability to a participant for all claims arising out of or relating to the Hackathon will not exceed the value of the competitive award, if any, that the participant actually received.

Indemnification

Each participant will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless SerpApi and its affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, judges, and community partners from and against any third-party claim, liability, damage, loss, and expense, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of or relating to (a) the participant’s project, submission, or other content; (b) the participant’s breach of these terms or the Rules; or (c) the participant’s violation of applicable law or third-party rights.

Release

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, each participant releases SerpApi and its affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, judges, and community partners from any claim or liability arising out of or relating to the participant’s participation in the Hackathon or receipt or use of an award, except to the extent caused by SerpApi’s gross negligence or willful misconduct.

10. General terms

Disqualification

SerpApi may disqualify a participant or project for ineligibility, rule violations, fraud, plagiarism, infringement, misrepresentation, abusive conduct, service abuse, security risks, failure to cooperate with verification, or conduct that undermines fair operation.

Decisions and severability

SerpApi's failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. If a provision is invalid or unenforceable, it will be modified or severed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will continue to apply.

Governing law and dispute resolution

These terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to the Hackathon are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Before commencing arbitration, a party must first attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute informally by providing written notice describing the dispute and the relief sought; if the dispute is not resolved within 30 days of that notice, it will be resolved by binding, individual arbitration, conducted on a documents-only or remote basis where practicable, and each participant waives any right to bring or participate in a class, collective, or representative action against SerpApi.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court (or the closest local equivalent available to the participant) in lieu of arbitration, if the claim qualifies for that court's jurisdiction and remains on an individual, non-class basis.

This governing-law and dispute-resolution provision does not limit any protection a participant has under mandatory law of the participant's country of residence that cannot be waived by agreement, including applicable Indian data-protection, tax-withholding, and online-gaming law, which continue to apply notwithstanding this provision.

Survival

Sections concerning intellectual property and licensing, no confidentiality, similar or independently developed content, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, release, disqualification, governing law and dispute resolution, and this survival provision continue after a participant’s disqualification or after the Hackathon ends.

Assignment

SerpApi may assign these terms, in whole or in part, to an affiliate or successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. A participant may not assign these terms without SerpApi’s prior written consent.

Entire agreement

These terms, together with the Hackathon Rules and the applicable provisions of SerpApi’s legal terms, constitute the entire agreement between the participant and SerpApi regarding the Hackathon and supersede any prior or contemporaneous understanding on that subject.

Questions

Questions about these Terms & Conditions may be sent to support@serpapi.com. Submission-specific support channels may be announced before the Hackathon begins.