Yury Pisarchyk From Belarus Beat 3.16 Lakh Coders To Become ‘Best Coder Of The World’ At Code Gladiators 2021

Albert Einstein’s saying, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”, was probably a prophecy for Yury Pisarchyk as he braved all the COVID-19 laden despair and fought 3.16 lakh coders globally to win the champion’s title at the world’s biggest coding competition - Code Gladiators 2021. Hailing from Minsk, Belarus, Yury was declared winner of Code Gladiators 2021 in a grand virtual finale ceremony held on July 29. 

For someone who was facing a time difference between Belarus and New-Delhi; an emerging winner with top-notch marks among 1,210 finalists (out of 3.16 Lakh total participants); Yury’s story is both inspirational and interesting. He participated in the 2020 edition of Code Gladiators too, he reached the finale round but logged in half an hour late and lost his edge. Still he was among the top ten people on the 2020 leaderboard. 

This year, Yuri Pisarchyk was more determined to win the crown and etch his name in the coding history. He was among the 200-odd international participants at Code Gladiators. Other foreign participants belonged to Bangladesh, the UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and Germany.   

Code Gladiators is an annual coding competition hosted by TechGig. It has been felicitated with the Guinness World Record and the Limca Book of Records mention for its massive participation throughout the years. The 2021 edition kicked off on March 22 with Cognizant, one of the world’s leading professional services companies for the digital era, as its presenting partner. 

It saw a participation of over 3.16 lakh coders despite the ongoing pandemic. Code Gladiators 2021, the second virtual version of the event, saw 25% more participation as compared to the 2020 edition, and highest ever recorded so far!

Code Gladiators 2021 concluded with the hackathon and coding finale rounds on July 24 and 25 respectively. Both these days, 1,210 finalists thronged the virtual arena at events.techgig.com to attempt their last coding problems. This was followed by a virtual career fair for the competition participants on July 28 and 29 where tech firm Persistent was shortlisting candidates for open positions. 

A grand virtual ceremony on July 29 marked the end of Code Gladiators 2021. The finale event brought together India’s best coders under one roof The event was marked by a special speech by NR Narayana Murthy, Founder, Infosys Limited. He highlighted how coders can make enduring and value for money software systems. He also mentioned Plato's admiration of beauty in mathematics. Allen Shaheen, Executive Vice-President, Digital Engineering, Cognizant delivered the keynote address where he talked about how coders were fuelling innovations and would be leading the next set of transformation in every domain. The event further hosted two panel discussions and a talk where speakers from Great Learning, VMware,  UiPath, Globant, Accenture, Nutanix, Publicis Sapient, Zinnov, Zycus, TomTom and other technology companies shared their insights on disruptions in the tech domain, managing tech careers and navigating through competitive workplaces. 

Talking about Code Gladiators 2021, a very jubilant Sanjay Goyal, Business Head, TimesJobs and TechGig said, “This year’s Code Gladiators was special in many ways. The record breaking participation of 3.16 Lakh coders proves that no pandemic, however grave, can crush the human spirit. We saw about 31% women coders turn up for the competition, this is the highest ever diversity ratio seen at Code Gladiators. I must thank all the corporate partners, especially Cognizant who shares our vision of democratising tech talent at Code Gladiators. Many congratulations to all the winners.”

“Code Gladiators has grown from strength to strength with each passing year and witnessed an unprecedented participation yet again this year and with even greater diversity. We at Cognizant have been excited to be the presenting partner of this year’s contest and beyond the numbers, we are in awe of your inventiveness, innovation, and passion. Code Gladiators represent the best of the future and inspire us and many others,” said Allen Shaheen, Executive Vice President, Global Practice Head Cognizant Enterprise, Engineering.

The 2021 edition had an open coding round and three theme hackathons, namely Bosch AI Hackathon, UiPath - RPA Hackathon 2021, and Times Internet Machine Learning Hackathon. Collectively the theme hackathons garnered over 43,000 registrations. These were focused on enabling coders to find business solutions to real-world problems using niche technologies.

Participants included 69% men and 31% women. Also 62% participants were professionals whereas 38% were technology students.

More than 15 winners were felicitated at the grand virtual finale ceremony. The Coding Champion Yury Pisarchy took home prizes worth Rs 3 Lakh. The total prize pool at Code Gladiators was Rs 50 Lakh. 

The complete winners’ list is:

Winner: Yury Pisarchyk

1st Runner up: Kalash Gupta

2nd Runner up: Rishabh Rathi

3rd Runner up: Manish Joshi 

4th Runner up: Abdullah Aslam

Code Diva award: Gayatri Marathe