Cars24 launches Rs 20 lakh AI hackathon backed by OpenAI, AWS and ElevenLabs

NEW DELHI: Cars24 has announced Token ’26, a high-stakes AI hackathon with a Rs 20 lakh winner-takes-all prize, as the used-car platform doubles down on what it describes as an AI-first transformation of its business.

Scheduled to take place in Delhi between May 28 and May 30, the event will bring together 50 shortlisted AI engineers from across India for a 72-hour solo coding challenge backed by OpenAI, ElevenLabs and Amazon Web Services.

Unlike conventional hackathons built around teams and prototypes, Token ’26 has been designed as an individual competition focused on real-world operational problems pulled directly from Cars24’s business ecosystem. Participants will work on AI-led solutions spanning vehicle pricing, inspections, customer decision-making and risk assessment, with the company expecting production-ready outcomes rather than concept demos.

The announcement also serves as a public marker of how aggressively Cars24 has integrated artificial intelligence across its operations over the past year.

According to the company, AI-driven automation has contributed to a 50 per cent increase in revenue per employee during the second half of FY26, while also adding roughly 300 basis points to EBITDA as revenues grew while operating costs remained largely flat.

In April this year, Cars24 founder and CEO Vikram Chopra reportedly issued an internal mandate positioning AI not as a standalone technology project but as the company’s operating model across every business function.

The company said the transition has already reshaped several parts of its operations.

In seller and inspection workflows, AI tools are now helping reduce inspection times while improving pricing accuracy and lowering the rate of inspection misses that impact buying economics.

Within refurbishment and retail operations, Cars24 said AI-powered daily hub audits now cover its entire retail network through around 1,750 automated checkpoints every day. The company also claimed its AI-led sales systems orchestrate more than 40,000 personalised customer journeys across the platform.

Its customer service infrastructure has also undergone major automation. Cars24 said its voice AI platform now handles over 1.5 million minutes of calls every month across seven languages and more than 20 workflows through a partnership with ElevenLabs.

On the lending and risk side, the company has deployed ten machine learning models across underwriting, fraud detection, collections and early-warning systems, processing over 80,000 documents per month for fraud detection alone.

Perhaps the biggest shift, however, has taken place within engineering itself. Cars24 claimed engineering output has increased fourfold, with every line of code reviewed by AI and nearly one-third now generated through AI systems. The company added that non-engineering employees have also started raising pull requests internally, something it expects to grow further.

Cars24 has also deepened its strategic relationship with OpenAI by integrating AI models across consumer-facing, partner and employee systems. Its application is now available through the ChatGPT Store, allowing users to discover vehicles through conversational AI.

Commenting on the initiative, Cars24 founder and CEO Vikram Chopra said, “AI is not a tool we give to teams, it is the operating model.”

Chopra added that the company was looking for engineers who understood that the businesses likely to win the next decade would not simply adopt AI but rebuild themselves around it.

The name Token ’26 itself borrows from AI terminology. In large language models, a token is the smallest unit of information processed by a system, an idea Cars24 said reflects its belief that individual builders can create systems with impact far greater than themselves.

As India’s startup ecosystem leans deeper into automation and generative AI, Cars24 is making it clear that for the company, the AI race is no longer experimental. It is already under the bonnet, tuning the engine.