Hacker hostels fuel bunch of tech builders

Discord server for people with an interest in tech has now evolved into a hacker house across different countries, including Romania, Japan and France.

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Grants and sponsorship opportunities aren't always easy to come by to cover the costs of hosting builders.

“We started with cohorts of just five people and have now expanded to 15,” said Sumukh, who turned 18 earlier this year. He sold his first venture during the Covid pandemic, when he was 15.

One of the earliest hacker hostels didn’t crop up in Bengaluru, but in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh. Altspace was launched by Prashant Abhishek, back in 2018. “Back then, we were more of a coding camp than a hacker hostel. We were AltCampus then.”

When the pandemic hit, Abhishek took the company online and later pivoted to make it a co-living and co-working space now called AltSpace. It is the largest hacker hostel in the country, capable of housing up to 50 people at a time.

So far, AltSpace has hosted two editions of the Indiehacking Retreat and the recently concluded AI Launchpad residency, a nine-week-long program for builders to come and build products together. At the end of Al Launchpad, AltSpace said it held a demo day, for founders to showcase what they had built and invited investors including Antler India, Blume Ventures, Lightspeed India, and Peak XV Partners. Mint could not independently verify this.