A deadline you cannot argue with
A competition fixes the scope by fixing the clock. What survives is the part of the idea that actually had to exist, which is the fastest way we know to find out whether an idea has anything in it.
TEAM KANBAN · KANBAN STUDIOSAbout the studio
Team Kanban
The competition and experimental build team inside Kanban Studios. A small group of the studio's engineers, entering hackathons, game jams and innovation challenges and building something that works before the clock runs out.
Build fast. Build things that matter. 🚀
WHAT IS TEAM KANBAN?
Team Kanban is the competition and experimental build team inside Kanban Studios F.Z.E, a software and AI studio in the United Arab Emirates. A small group of the studio's engineers enters hackathons, game jams and innovation challenges, builds a working system against the deadline, and keeps the ones worth keeping. Projects span health, climate, space, agriculture, robotics and developer tooling.
- Part of
- Kanban Studios F.Z.E
- Based in
- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- Formed as
- An internal team, not a separate company
- Competes in
- Hackathons, game jams & challenges
THE 19-SECOND VERSION
90+ entered, 35+ won, and the 18 we can prove — in about the time it takes to read this sentence twice.
Smart Health Hackathon1st placeHult Prize, university roundwinner of the university roundSandooq Al Watan Heritage Innovation1st placeUAE Game Makers Competition - Game Jam 20241st place - best overall gameCTRL Game Jam1st placeSafe AI Cup1st placeEDGE Industry Challenge1st placeUniversity Hackathon: Farm to Market Innovation Sprint2nd placeNextGen Challenge2nd placeZayed University AI Hackathon3rd placec0mpiled-2 UAE Hackathon3rd placeNASA Space Apps Challenge, Dubaimost promisingRAK Excellence Awardscored above 80%Tatweer HackathonenteredTamkeen 5.0 HackathonenteredSHIFT Game JamenteredAI Hackathon UAEenteredGemini 3 Hackathonentered
01 — WHO WE ARE
Small on purposeSized at the number of people who can hold the whole build in their heads.
6 years in90+ competitions entered, 35+ won.
Most get binnedA weekend build earns a case study or it goes in the bin. Usually the bin.
Kanban Studios builds production systems for organisations - CRM, automation, document intelligence, dashboards, the software a business runs its day on. Team Kanban is the same engineers on the other setting: short deadlines, unfamiliar problems, and a build that has to exist by the end of the weekend.
It is deliberately small. Nobody is assigned to a competition team and nobody hands work off inside one - whoever takes the brief writes the code. That is the same reason the studio stays lean, and it is why a competition build can be scoped, argued about, and shipped inside forty-eight hours.
The team does not build demos designed to survive a stage and nothing else. The brief is always a real problem in a real domain, and the test is whether the thing runs. Most of what comes out is thrown away. A few end up as published case studies, and one or two go further.
THE WALL
Receipts, taped to the board.
Result slides, prize cheques and certificates, plus the rooms they were won in. Each caption says only what is readable in the frame - where a photo does not show a result, it does not claim one.
Longer walkthroughs of these builds are published as video: Build videos & proof-of-concept demos.
02 — WHY WE COMPETE
A competition is a test rig.
Four reasons the studio keeps entering, none of them the trophy.
Someone else picks the problem
A challenge brief drops us into a domain we did not choose - waste auditing, farm logistics, near-Earth objects - and makes us learn its real constraints from the people who work in it.
Unfamiliar technology, under load
New models, new runtimes, and new hardware get tried here first, on a build that has to work in front of judges, before they go near a client system.
A judged outcome, not a self-assessment
Someone with no stake in our opinion of ourselves scores the result. That is a harder signal than an internal review, and it goes on the record either way.
03 — THE NUMBERS
Six years of entering things.
Team Kanban has entered 90+ hackathons, game jams and innovation challenges over 6 years, and won 35+ of them.
90+Competitions enteredHackathons, game jams and innovation challenges.
6Years competingStill entering them.
35+WonFirst place, across the whole run.
OF THOSE, WHAT WE CAN SHOW YOU
The three figures above are our own count across six years, and most of that run was never written down anywhere public. These 18 are the ones with a receipt - a dated certificate, a prize cheque, a result slide or a published case study. They are itemised, with photographs, further down.
18DocumentedEvery one listed below
7First placeOutright wins
4Podium2nd or 3rd
2AwardsNot placements
13 of the 18 documented produced a recorded outcome. The remaining 5 are competitions we entered and built for where no result is on file, and they are listed as entries rather than quietly folded into the total. A recognition is not a placement and a placement is not a win; the record keeps them apart.
04 — BUILT FOR IMPACT
Problems worth 48 hours.
Eight areas, each one named because a real build sits behind it.
- HEALTH
Turning an ordinary camera into a real-time form coach that flags unsafe movement before it causes an injury, with the model running on the device.
- SUSTAINABILITY
Classifying waste at the bin on cheap hardware and writing a tamper-evident log, so a recycling claim can be audited instead of asserted.
- FOOD SUPPLY
Pooling demand across nearby farms and allocating one buyer order among them before harvest, in Arabic, for growers who do not use software.
- SPACE
Putting live NASA near-Earth object data behind a physics-based impact simulator, so a hazard figure can be explored rather than read.
- DEVELOPER TOOLING
Taking a short bug replay and producing a reproducible Playwright test, a patch attempt, a verification run, and an evidence pack.
- RURAL ACCESS
An Arabic-first, offline-capable field app that turns a spoken note into a structured animal record and a vet-ready report, with no install.
- PROPERTY AND COMPLIANCE
Gating a fractional property transaction behind KYC/AML checks, document verification, and a settlement step that cannot be skipped.
- GAMES
A game built for a national game-development competition, where the constraint was a finished, playable thing rather than a slide.
Falcon's Odyssey
05 — COMPETITION RECORD
Every documented one, on the record.
Competition, project, year, result, and the problem it addressed - with a link to the build or the photograph where one exists. Where the record is thin, it says so.
- 1st place01
Smart Health Hackathon
- Result
- 1st place, with AED 20,000 in foresight funding
- Project
- BeBTR
- Year
- 2025
- Run by
- Run by startAD at Abu Dhabi Global Health Week, hosted by the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi with Microsoft
- Problem
- Preventive health and injury prevention
- Computer vision
- Pose estimation
- On-device inference
- 1st place02
Hult Prize, university round
- Result
- Winner of the university round
- Project
- EcoLens AI
- Year
- 2026
- Problem
- Circular economy and verified waste reporting
- TensorFlow Lite
- MobileNetV2
- SHA-256 audit logs
- 1st place03
Sandooq Al Watan Heritage Innovation
- Result
- 1st place
- Project
- Not on file
- Year
- Not on file
- Problem
- Not on file
- 1st place04
UAE Game Makers Competition - Game Jam 2024
- Result
- 1st place - Best Overall Game
- Project
- Falcon's Odyssey
- Year
- 2024
- Run by
- Tawazun Council, with SPACE42 and Endless Studios
- Problem
- Game development
- 1st place05
CTRL Game Jam
- Result
- 1st place, with AED 30,000
- Project
- Not on file
- Year
- Not on file
- Run by
- Abu Dhabi Gaming
- Problem
- Game development
- 1st place06
Safe AI Cup
- Result
- 1st place
- Project
- Not on file
- Year
- Not on file
- Run by
- Partners included the UAE Cyber Security Council, CYBER E71 and DP World
- Problem
- Safe and secure AI
- 1st place07
EDGE Industry Challenge
- Result
- 1st place
- Project
- FalconPetrol AI
- Year
- Not on file
- Run by
- EDGE Learning & Innovation Factory, with the UAE Ministry of Industry & Advanced Technology, at Make it in the Emirates
- Problem
- Robotics and industry
- Podium08
University Hackathon: Farm to Market Innovation Sprint
- Result
- 2nd place, with AED 8,000
- Project
- SooqRoot
- Year
- 2026
- Run by
- Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, at the Emirates Agriculture Conference & Exhibition
- Problem
- Farm-to-market coordination and food supply
- React
- TypeScript
- Rule-based allocation
- Arabic-first UI
- Podium09
NextGen Challenge
- Result
- 2nd place
- Project
- FalconPatrol AI
- Year
- Not on file
- Problem
- Not on file
- Podium10
Zayed University AI Hackathon
- Result
- 3rd place
- Project
- DocuMaster
- Year
- Not on file
- Run by
- Zayed University
- Problem
- Not on file
- Podium11
c0mpiled-2 UAE Hackathon
- Result
- 3rd place
- Project
- DeedFlow
- Year
- Not on file
- Problem
- Property transactions, KYC/AML and settlement
- Transaction orchestration
- Document verification
- Audit trail
- Recognition12
NASA Space Apps Challenge, Dubai
- Result
- Most PromisingA special recognition, not a placement.
- Project
- Meteor Madness
- Year
- Not on file
- Problem
- Near-Earth objects and impact simulation
- React Three Fiber
- Three.js
- NASA NEO API
- Award13
RAK Excellence Award
- Result
- Scored above 80%A scored award, not a competition placement.
- Project
- EcoLens AI
- Year
- Not on file
- Problem
- Circular economy and verified waste reporting
- Entered14
Tatweer Hackathon
- Result
- Entered and built. No result on file.
- Project
- Raa'i
- Year
- 2026
- Problem
- Rural livelihoods and Arabic-first offline access
- Next.js
- Groq AI
- Offline PWA
- Cloudflare Workers
- Entered15
Tamkeen 5.0 Hackathon
- Result
- Entered and built. Certificate of participation; no placement.
- Project
- Tamkeen Tutor
- Year
- Not on file
- Run by
- EDGE and BRIDGE, with the Abu Dhabi Youth Councils
- Problem
- Agentic AI - the challenge theme was Agentic AI for the UAE
- Entered16
SHIFT Game Jam
- Result
- Entered and built. Certificates of participation; no placement.
- Project
- Not on file
- Year
- Not on file
- Run by
- Abu Dhabi Gaming, with the Abu Dhabi Heritage Authority and Endless Studios
- Problem
- Game development
- Entered17
AI Hackathon UAE
- Result
- Entered and built. Certificates of participation; no placement.
- Project
- Not on file
- Year
- 2025
- Run by
- Sponsors included Gargash and Snowflake
- Problem
- Not on file
- Entered18
Gemini 3 Hackathon
- Result
- Entered and built. No result on file.
- Project
- Replay2PR
- Year
- Not on file
- Problem
- Developer tooling and automated bug reproduction
- Gemini 3
- Playwright
- Next.js
Links here point to our own case studies, to the photographs above, and to builds that are live on the public internet. Where an organiser has published its own results page, that is the better source, and we will link it here as each one is confirmed.
06 — PROJECTS
What came out of them.
7 competition projects are written up in full as case studies.
BeBTR
On-device computer vision that turns any camera into a real-time form coach - pose estimation detects unsafe movement and corrects posture, running entirely in the browser.
Read the buildEcoLens AI
An edge-computing framework for verified circular economy - on-device waste classification, tamper-proof audit logs, and compliance-ready impact exports.
Read the buildSooqRoot
An Arabic-first farm-to-market coordination platform: an AI translator turns free-text demand into farmer-ready specs, and a rule-based engine pools nearby farms and allocates orders across them.
Read the buildDeedFlow
Transaction orchestration for fractional and tokenized property deals: KYC/AML checks, document verification, hard settlement gates, e-signature, and a full audit trail behind every stage.
Read the buildMeteor Madness
An interactive 3D near-Earth object platform: live NASA asteroid feeds, a physics-based impact simulator, and a hazard-alert system rendered in a real-time WebGL solar view.
Read the buildRaa'i
An Arabic-first, offline-capable field companion: a spoken note becomes a structured animal record and a vet-ready report, with bookings taken over WhatsApp and no app install.
Read the buildReplay2PR
A pipeline that turns a short bug replay into a reproducible Playwright test, an automated patch attempt, a verification run, and a shareable evidence pack.
Read the build
ALSO BUILT AT COMPETITIONS
These have no write-up here yet - some have a repository or a live build, some only a name and a weekend behind them.
- MizanCase study
- Starkz AINo public link on file
- ShaheenNo public link on file
07 — THE BUILDERS
No profilesWe do not publish individual bios anywhere on this site, here included.
Want in?Open roles are on Careers. Build like this and we should talk.
Team Kanban is small on purpose. A competition weekend has no room for a handover, a spec review, or a second opinion that arrives on Monday - so the team is sized at the number of people who can hold the whole build in their heads at once.
We do not publish individual profiles anywhere on this site, and that includes here. The engineering and research disciplines behind the work are described on the About page. If you build like this and want to do it with us, the open roles are on Careers.
08 — AFTER DEMO DAY
Most demos die. Some keep going.
A competition build is a prototype, not a product. This is the route the few that survive actually take.
CompetitionA brief, a deadline, a judged result
PrototypeSomething that runs, not a deck
Case studyWritten up under /work if it held
Kanban LabsHosting, launch and support for the few with users ahead of them
- Kanban Studios
- The company. A UAE software and AI studio that builds production systems for organisations. About the studio.
- Team Kanban
- This page. The studio's competition and experimental build team - the same engineers, working to a competition clock.
- Kanban Labs
- Where a prototype can go next - ours or someone else's. Hosting, launch and support on a 90/10 revenue share. Kanban Labs.
FAQ
Team Kanban, answered.
What is Team Kanban?
Team Kanban is the competition and experimental build team inside Kanban Studios F.Z.E, a software and AI studio in the United Arab Emirates. A small group of the studio's engineers enters hackathons, game jams and innovation challenges, builds a working system against the deadline, and keeps the ones worth keeping. Projects span health, climate, space, agriculture, robotics and developer tooling.
Is Team Kanban part of Kanban Studios?
Yes. Team Kanban is not a separate company. It is the competition and experimental build team inside Kanban Studios F.Z.E, staffed by the studio's own engineers, and it is how the studio runs its experiments.
What does Team Kanban build?
Working systems rather than slideware. The record includes on-device computer vision for injury prevention, edge AI for verified waste reporting, an Arabic-first farm coordination platform, a near-Earth object simulator on live NASA data, an automated bug-reproduction pipeline, and a game.
Does Team Kanban compete in hackathons?
Yes, and in game jams and innovation challenges. Team Kanban has entered 90+ hackathons, game jams and innovation challenges over 6 years, and won 35+ of them. 18 competitions are documented here: 7 first-place finishes, 4 podium placements, 2 further awards or recognitions, and 5 entries with no result on file. Each documented one carries its competition, project, result and, where one exists, a link to the case study, the live build, or a photograph of the certificate or prize.
What happens to a Team Kanban project after the competition?
Most stop there, and that is the point of the format. A project that holds up is written into a case study under /work, and a prototype with a plausible route to real users can go on into Kanban Labs, which handles hosting, launch, and support.
Where is Team Kanban based?
The United Arab Emirates. Kanban Studios F.Z.E is based in Abu Dhabi, and Team Kanban competes mainly in UAE hackathons and innovation challenges, alongside online events.
