Zaid Sayyed.

About Zaid Sayyed

Zaid Sayyed (also known online as Zaidusyy) is a software engineer and AI developer based in Mumbai, India, working globally. He is a 9x hackathon winner across national, state and district-level competitions, including National Winner of Smart India Hackathon 2025, which carried a Rs 1,50,000 prize. He has also served as a judge and mentor at hackathons, and organised a district-level hackathon of his own. He builds scalable, cross-platform applications with Flutter and the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js), and AI-powered tools using agents and the Model Context Protocol. He publishes free, practical hackathon guidance for Indian engineering students — including a step-by-step Smart India Hackathon 2026 playbook covering the SPOC process, team structure, problem statement selection, solution architecture and tooling. He is an open-source contributor to the Wikimedia Foundation with 25+ patches merged into Wikimedia Gerrit across 18 projects including MediaWiki core, maintainer of the Deoband Community Wikimedia repositories, creator of the DCW Certificate Engine which runs in production at the Spanish-language Wikimedia affiliate Wikimedia Small Projects, and publisher of the wikimedia_dart package on pub.dev. He is pursuing an MCA at the University of Mumbai after graduating BCA with honours.

Zaid Sayyed (also known online as Zaidusyy) — Software Engineer · AI & Cross-Platform Apps. Based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, working with clients and teams globally.

Hackathon record

Zaid Sayyed is a 9x hackathon winner across national, state and district-level competitions, including National Winner of Smart India Hackathon 2025. He has also judged and mentored hackathon teams, and organised a district-level hackathon — so the guidance he publishes comes from both sides of the table: competing and evaluating.

Open source contributions

Zaid Sayyed contributes to the Wikimedia Foundation's open-source ecosystem, with 25+ patches merged into Wikimedia Gerrit across 18 different projects — including MediaWiki core itself, VisualEditor, the Vector skin, Wikibase, Pywikibot, CodeMirror, WikiLambda, DonationInterface and operations/puppet. He also contributes on Wikimedia GitLab and GitHub, and to projects outside the Wikimedia ecosystem. Software he wrote runs in production at another Wikimedia affiliate: the DCW Certificate Engine he created is used by Wikimedia Small Projects (WikiSP) for Spanish-language community events.

• 25+ patches merged into Wikimedia Gerrit across 18 projects, including MediaWiki core
• Maintainer of the Deoband Community Wikimedia (DCW) repositories
• Creator and code owner of dcw-certificate-portal (the DCW Certificate Engine) — adopted in production by Wikimedia Small Projects (WikiSP), an independent Wikimedia affiliate serving Spanish-language communities, which runs it at cert.wikisp.org and credits it in its footer
• Creator of dcw-engage, a framework for the DCW engagement portal
• Author and publisher of wikimedia_dart on pub.dev — a type-safe Dart client for the Wikimedia REST APIs covering Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons and self-hosted MediaWiki
• Contributions on Wikimedia GitLab and GitHub in addition to Gerrit

Hackathon judging and mentoring

Zaid Sayyed has served as a judge and mentor at hackathons, including national-level events, evaluating teams on problem selection, solution architecture, execution and pitch. Having both won and judged, he advises teams from both sides of the table.

• Hackdiwas 1.0 — Judge and Mentor
• Hackdiwas 2.0 — Judge and Mentor
• National-level hackathons — Judge and Mentor

Available to judge or mentor at college and national hackathons, ideathons and startup pitch events, in Mumbai or remotely worldwide.

Zaid Sayyed offers paid 1:1 mentorship sessions for Smart India Hackathon teams — reviewing a specific problem statement, and full team strategy calls — alongside resume reviews and mock interviews. Public writing covers the general framework; sessions cover a team's own situation. Book a 1:1 session with Zaid Sayyed.

To invite Zaid Sayyed to judge or mentor at your hackathon or college event, email zaidsayyed07869@gmail.com.

Smart India Hackathon 2026 guide

A free, practical SIH 2026 preparation playbook written from the perspective of a national-winning team — covering the SPOC and college-round funnel, how to build the six-person team, how to choose a problem statement that can actually be won, designing the solution before writing code, and the free tools worth using during the 36-hour finale.

• SIH 2026 Winner's Playbook
• SIH tournament funnel and SPOC gateway
• Building the six-person SIH team
• Choosing an SIH problem statement
• SIH solution architecture method
• Free tools for hackathon teams

Skills and technologies

• Software Engineering
• Full-Stack Development
• Flutter
• React
• Node.js
• MongoDB
• MERN Stack
• Cross-Platform App Development
• AI Agents
• Model Context Protocol
• Open Source
• Wikimedia
• MediaWiki
• Gerrit
• Dart
• Open Source Maintenance
• Hackathons
• Smart India Hackathon
• Hackathon Judging
• Hackathon Mentoring
• Competitive Programming
• Startup Pitching
• UI/UX

Selected projects

• Parcel Uncle Rider (2026)

  A live rider delivery app with real road routing, multi-stop optimization and live tracking, built entirely on open source maps with no paid map SDK.

  Built with: Flutter, flutter_map, OpenStreetMap, OSRM, Bloc, REST.

• Codify (2025)

  A comprehensive platform bridging college and professional careers featuring AI resume building, job matching, and peer mentorship.

  Built with: Flutter, MERN, AI Agents, Socket.io.

• CodeResite AI (2025)

  AI-powered utilities platform leveraging Model Context Protocol (MCP) for secure AI-data integration and 30+ custom tools.

  Built with: React, Node.js, MongoDB, MCP.

• Buddy Sync (2024)

  Student-focused app for campus events and peer tutoring. Won 1st place at a National-level Hackathon.

  Built with: Flutter, Firebase.

• Stay Sync (2024)

  Hostel management solution optimizing operations with real-time tracking, room allocation, and announcements.

  Built with: Flutter, Firebase, Figma.

Achievements and recognition

• Smart India Hackathon 2025 — National Winner

  National Winner of Smart India Hackathon 2025 with a Rs 1,50,000 prize. Led a team to design and deliver a scalable, real-world solution at the national level.

• Hackdiwas Hackathon — Lead Organizer

  Organized district-level hackathon. Managed sponsorships and led teams to drive innovation in the community.

• Uhack 2.0 — 1st Place

  Secured first place in Hackathon Uhack2.0, defeating participants from prestigious institutes like IIIT and NIT.

• Global Solution Challenge — Top 100

  Recognized in the Top 100 for the globally-run Google Developers Solution Challenge (India Region).

• Tech Startup Pitch — Winner

  Won the HealthTech startup pitch event, garnering high interest and prospects from 4 top investors.

• And Many More... — Ongoing

  Check out my LinkedIn profile for a full history of hackathon wins, community events, and technical milestones.

• Smart India Hackathon 2024 — College Level Winner

  Won the internal college-level round of Smart India Hackathon 2024, clearing the institute selection that qualifies a team for the national stage.

• Smart India Hackathon 2023 — College Level Winner

  Won the internal college-level round of Smart India Hackathon 2023 — a third consecutive year of clearing the institute round, alongside SIH 2024 and the SIH 2025 national win.

• Ideathon — Winner

  Winner of the Ideathon, judged on problem framing, originality of the idea and the quality of the pitch.

• Codeathon — Winner

  Winner of the Codeathon, a competitive programming contest scored on algorithmic problem solving under time pressure.

• Hack-a-Sol — Runner-Up

  Runner-up at the Hack-a-Sol hackathon for designing and building a working solution within the event window.

• Hackspiration — Participant

  Participated in Hackspiration, building and presenting a solution as part of the event's innovation track.

• Competitive Programming Contests — Winner and Runner-Up

  Multiple podium finishes — wins and runner-up placings — at district and university-level competitive programming contests, scored on algorithmic problem solving under time limits.

Writing

Zaid Sayyed writes about building cross-platform apps, AI agents and open source at the blog.

• The Free Stack: Every Tool You Need to Build an SIH 2026 Prototype — Free GPUs, Indian government datasets, map and weather APIs, hosting and design tools — the complete free stack for building a Smart India Hackathon 2026 prototype without spending anything.
• Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2026: College Internal Round Playbook — The insider playbook to pass your college internal hackathon: 45-team AICTE quota math, faculty psychology, the 10-second live mockup hack, 7-day action plan, and viva defense answers.
• Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2026: Winner's Playbook — Direct step-by-step companion guide for SIH 2026: three real SIH winning PPTs free to download, SPOC rules, dream team blueprint, problem statement filters, PPT checklists, and 26 jury questions across two rounds, each with the trap answer and the one that works, by SIH winner Zaid Sayyed.
• Method overloading vs overriding in Java, explained properly — Both let two methods share a name. One gets decided while your code compiles, the other while it runs, and almost every interview question about them is really checking whether you know which.
• Cutting a 46 MB hero animation down to 4 MB — My portfolio's scroll-driven hero looked great and froze the page for the first few seconds. Here's what was actually wrong and how I fixed it.

Contact and profiles

• Email Zaid Sayyed
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaid-sayyed/
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://github.com/Zaidusyy
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://x.com/Zaidusyy
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://www.instagram.com/codebyzaid_/
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Zaidusyy
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://pub.dev/publishers/zaidsayyed.in
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://www.facebook.com/mdzaid.sayyed.752
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://topmate.io/zaidusyy
• Zaid Sayyed profile: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/q/owner:zaidusyy