The rooms our students walked into. The things they built after.
A first-year who had already sold two startups. A Saturday spent with OpenAI’s engineers. A final round judged by Y Combinator. Some stories move too fast for a prospectus. ORBIT catches them, one quarter at a time.
Latest ORBIT Q2 2026 · Apr–Jun 2026
From ORBIT Q2 2026
The gap between learning to build and building for the real world is often a question of access.
This quarter, we saw more of that distance disappear at Polaris. Having Y Combinator on campus brought students closer to the thinking that shapes some of the world’s most ambitious startups. Our partnership with Google opened new ways for students to engage with technology and the people building it. And at our first-ever Demo Day, students presented products they had built across AI, SaaS, automation and consumer technology to founders, engineers and industry leaders.
Education often asks students to wait until they are ready. The real world rarely works that way. That is ultimately what ORBIT documents: not just the products students build or the rooms they enter, but the instinct developing underneath it all.
Mukul RustagiCo-founder, Polaris School of Technology & Classplus
Read the full note in ORBIT: the full founder’s note (ORBIT Q2 2026, page 6)Workshops · 2026
31 January 2026
On 31 January 2026, Polaris hosted AI Engineers Day, co-organised with OpenAI, Peak XV Partners and Activate. 2,000 builders applied and 600 were selected. Our students helped run the day and sat in on deep sessions on Codex, AI agents and multimodal systems with OpenAI’s own engineers.
Read in ORBIT: The day OpenAI came to Polaris (ORBIT Q1 2026, page 10)
16 April 2026
On 16 April 2026, Emergent brought VibeCon 2026 to our campus, a 30-hour build competition. More than 25,000 people applied and about 300 made the cut. Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman judged the final round and told students to keep building projects of their own.
Read in ORBIT: The day Y Combinator came to Polaris (ORBIT Q2 2026, page 10)
Partnership
Every Polaris student now has access to up to $10,000 in Google certification pathways across AI, Cloud, Cybersecurity and Data, at no cost. Students build projects on Google tools, bring AI into their coding and career preparation, and spend time at Google’s Bengaluru campus with the people who work there.
The ambition, student mindset, and commitment to transformation made Polaris School of Technology a natural fit with Google’s vision for the future of education.
More from the quarter
Workshop
On 24 March 2026, Polaris hosted India’s first official Databricks campus hackathon. Four Databricks engineers took students from first principles to a live build on the Data Intelligence Platform, and the top teams won a mentorship visit to Databricks’ Bengaluru office.
Read in ORBIT: Databricks’ day-long hackathon at Polaris (ORBIT Q1 2026, page 30)
Demo Day
In May 2026, students from the Classes of 2028 and 2029 presented working products to founders, engineers and hiring teams across eight judging pods. The question wasn’t “did you finish?” but “would anyone use this?”
Read in ORBIT: Student builders put working products in front of industry at the first-year Demo Day (ORBIT Q2 2026, page 52)
Guest lecture
The former Head of Brand at Dunzo and AVP Marketing at Zomato told 97 students that brand equals story plus product, that culture beats consistency, and that proof of work beats pedigree.
Read in ORBIT: Sai Ganesh on why brands are built on stories, not logos (ORBIT Q1 2026, page 60)
Build
Six student teams spent weeks re-engineering open-source Turmo 5 cars, then raced them at up to 60 km/h on a custom-built track of ramps, jumps and banked turns.
Read in ORBIT: Polaris GP Racing takes to the track (ORBIT Q2 2026, page 46)
Interviewers are testing whether you understand your own work, not just whether it runs.
At Polaris, the industry is in the room with you from the beginning, not as a distant destination you’ll reach after four years.
Building has become so easy, cheap and democratised that even if you are from a very remote village and an underprivileged family, you can still build what you imagine.
Four ways to keep up with what Polaris students build next.
