Story Content

February 17, 2026. The India AI Impact Expo and Summit held their unveiling event in Bharat Mandapam and inaugurated it with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was planned to attract more than 600 participants in the form of startups, who are going to be global leaders, and thousands of delegates to India to showcase AI. Almost 400 final-year B.Tech (CSE & AI) students at Galgotias University, Greater Noida, were also among them, eager, dressed in new college blazers, with notebooks, laptops, and aspirations of linking to the industry giants.

By 10 AM, reality hit hard. The check-ins clogged the registration counters. Even the pre-registered groups took 2-3 hours of queues. Wi-Fi was nearly nonexistent—students were not able to use the event app, scan badges, and participate in live events. There were numerous cases of lost phones and wallets in the procession. The food stalls were out of water and snacks in several hours. Toilets overflowed. One could not find volunteers. The students (college buses brought them 60 km away in Greater Noida) had to wait hours in the sun waiting by Gate 1.

At 1 PM the frustrations were eating him up. One of the groups of Galgotias students started making videos and posting on Instagram and X with such captions as "AI summit or survival camp?" We can’t even enter with 600 startups inside. Locally the videos became viral. Members of the faculty staff that came with the group attempted to liaise with organizers, but they lost track. At about 2:30 PM, the verdict was arrived at: the whole Galgotias delegation would leave the venue after a tense meeting between the college coordinator and the security officials.

Buses were called back early. At 4 PM, the majority of the students were heading home—starving, exhausted, discouraged, and even handless. Later a final-year student who had not specified his name informed reporters:

This is an event, it was told to us, that would make a change in our lives—meet investors, have AI demos, get internships. Rather, we were waiting in 6-hour queues and heat. We did not even glimpse at the exhibition hall. It made it seem that they beckoned us to occupy seats.

The bulk of it was one of the more popular side stories of Day 1. Although the Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had to publicly apologize over the failure in logistics, most students and parents blamed the organizers in question for having done a bad job of planning the event even with months of planning on their hands and a huge budget at their disposal.

In the case of the Galgotias students, it was a lesson to be disappointed in life, as what was to be a proud display turned out to be an eye-opening experience of reality. One of the students concluded it all on a group chat once their buses were returning to Greater Noida:

This is because AI, well, could change the world... it could not even handle getting into its own summit today.