Animall: The IIT-duo turning India’s traditional cattle trade digital
Written by: Team GI Youth
(October 7, 2023) “Yeh app nahi, aandolan hai,” a farmer remarked to Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra, the co-founders of ‘Animall’. After struggling for over a month, the farmer had just sold three cows within 24 hours through the easy-to-use app. What started as a weekend project back in August 2019 had become what its co-founders had always envisioned – disruptor. Four years later, the company is a top-funded VC startup, boasts an annual income of Rs 565 crore, and has facilitated the buying and selling of 8.5 lakh animals worth Rs 4000 crore, across the country.
Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra. Photo: Forbes
A new bond
Neetu Yadav (26) and Kirti Jangra (27) met soon after they each arrived at IIT-Delhi. For Neetu in particular, it was the start of a brand-new life. She was leaving behind the tiny, rural farming community she called home, and finally transcending its rural mentality. Her father was often advised not to invest in his daughter’s education, but he “always treated her like a son,” he said in an interview. And Neetu wanted to be someone. “With the help of many people, including my uncle, I went to Kota to study,” she says. “Out of 100 people in my batch, I was the only girl.” As it happened, Kirti also prepared at Kota, the Rajasthani city that is (in)famous for being a hub for IIT-JEE coaching centres, which has earned it the moniker, ‘Kota Factory. Neetu’s exposure to the outside world came from films, where she watched stories of young people going abroad to study. “The experience of being at IIT itself was a dream come true for me, I was going outside my hometown to study,” she says.
“Kirti was the first person I met,” says Neetu. A few hours later, they discovered they were going to be roommates. It turned out to be the start of an enduring friendship. “We had a cooler company for a few weeks,” they recall, laughing. “It was called Kirti-Neetu Cooler Company, we weren’t too creative with the name!” The idea came because of the old electrical system at IIT-Delhi. A regular cooler could blow the fuse for the entire campus. So, they decided to come up with a low-cost, low-voltage cooler. They took oil containers from the hostel kitchens and used them to make their cooler. “We thought we could make a lot of money selling and then realised the market was too small. But that was the first time we thought of building a startup together.
Building Animall
The cooler company didn’t take off but both young women were enterprising, and driven to make a social impact. Animall first took shape in August 2019 from a room in Bengaluru, where Neetu and Kirti were participating in a weekend hackathon. Organised by a storytelling organisation named Pratilipi, the hackathon theme was to build for one billion users. Neetu leaned into her own roots to get a better understanding of what the One Billion needs – she knew that the next one billion users meant millions who live in rural India. “Whenever you look at a farming family, there are just two aspects – agriculture and animal husbandry. Animal husbandry is mainly dairy,” Neetu says.
That’s how the Global Indians decided to create Animall and their five-member team went on to win both the jury and audience awards at the event. Neetu and Kirti wanted to grow Animall and used the Rs 2 lakh they received as prize money to fund their early operations. “We used it for marketing, servers etc,” she adds.
Animal husbandry contributes anywhere between five to seven percent of the national GDP. But in 2019, when Team Animall conducted extensive research across the country, interviewing thousands of farmers they realised that the sector is largely untouched by technology. In 2022, the gross value added from livestock within the agricultural industry was over seven trillion rupees but the trade of cattle continues to operate in a highly informal, fragmented, and disorganised ecosystem. Kirti and Neetu were both keen on making an impact and realised this was where they needed to be.
“Just the idea of trying to organise, trying to disrupt an unorganised market like this… the market is hungry for a platform like Animall,” says Kirti. They set about trying to create a user-friendly, one-stop-shop for cattle farmers. However, their idea was not well-received, either at home or by investors. “If you wanted to herd cattle, why did you go to IIT? We could have done that for you right here,” Kirti’s father joked when she first pitched the idea. Neetu’s family, who had pulled out all the stops to make sure their daughter made it to an IIT, was appalled by the thought of her quitting her job to build an app, that too an app for cows but resigned themselves to it saying, “But since you want to do this, how can we stop you.” Investors were skeptical too. “Who will download this,” they asked the co-founders. “Will people use this? Even their batchmates didn’t buy into it. “Do you think rural people will be able to download and use an app?”
Disrupting the market
They chose the herd, however, and shunned the herd mentality, and 10 million downloads later, their critics have more than retreated. “Build for Bharat is real,” Kirti insists. “Bharat is online.” Sequoia led a $6 million funding round for the fledgling company and they arrived on the scene. But they are not without challenges, even now.
Indian farmers are happy to hop onto the tech bandwagon, but buying and selling cattle is, at the end of the day, a hands-on process. It’s not easy to convince a seller who is far away, to invest in a cow he has never milked. That’s not all. Their market is in the heartland of rural North India, in states like Haryana and Jharkhand that are mired in patriarchy to the point where Neetu and Kirti find it hard to be taken seriously, simply because they are women. “Men have a larger network. To enter those rooms as women is very hard. We ignore the glass ceiling. We don’t make it the limit. We just do our thing,” Kirti says.
It has only taught them to think differently. “Our thought process has changed significantly,” says Neetu. “It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to be wrong,” Kirti adds. “You just have to learn from it. We have taken short-term decisions and then realised, hey, this is not who we are, we want to plan for the long-term.” And above all, they value each other. “I think stereotypically, women friendships are underplayed,” Kirti remarks. “I think they bring a lot to your life. Just like bro-hood has its advantages, sisterhood has its advantages too.”
(April 12, 2023) It was the viral ALS ice-bucket challenge - wherein participants dump buckets of cold water on each other’s heads - that made the then nine-year-old Oyon Ganguly come up with an idea of a water-recycling device as he was surprised by the terrible waste of water. 10-minute shower wastes 50 gallons of water - this piece of information was enough for this Indian American to come up with The Cleaner - a water recycling prototype that filters water to be re-used in the shower. The invention won this Massachusetts resident Invention Mighty Minds contest, a national-level contest run jointly by the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) which acts as America’s platform for budding young inventors. "I asked my mom how much water is used in a single shower and I learned that around 50 gallons of water is used in a single use. Multiply that by five people taking 20-minute showers, that's around 500 gallons," he said in a YouTube video. This was enough for him to come up with a device that could recycle and reuse water that drains away during a shower. His invention was made inside a strawberry box that held three layers
ice that could recycle and reuse water that drains away during a shower. His invention was made inside a strawberry box that held three layers of cleaning material--gravel, sand, and charcoal.
Explaining how his invention works, the Global Indian said in an interview, "When someone takes a shower, the water goes down the drain and through the pipe before it reaches a filter with three layers: gravel, sand, and charcoal. The water, which is now clean and filtered, sits in a storage tank before it gets pumped back up to the bathtub. Because over time, the filter gets clogged, there will be a little door to make sure you get access to the filter."
The grandson of Bengali novelist and Sahitya Akademi award-winner Sunil Gangopadhyay, Oyon took the help of his friend Mateo Rosado for the filtering process. Oyon reveals that his invention can save both water and money. "Even though the invention can be expensive, it saves the government from spending more money to get water and also reduced your water bill," he explained in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsSolEq5vZY
He credits his mother for making him participate in the Mighty Minds competition. "I went to Camp Invention in Watertown. We build things with recycled materials and my shower model was built mostly with recycled stuff. I spent an hour over two weekends putting together the presentation," he said.
Oyon has worked on another invention idea - The Space Cleaner - a solar-powered robot with one arm that melts space junk and the other arm vacuums up the melted liquid. The idea for this came to him while watching Apollo 13 with his parents. The Indian American thought to himself, “What happens to everything that’s flying off the ship into space?”
He plans to be one of the three things when he grows up - an inventor, work at Lego, or for Mojang (the company that develops the video game Minecraft).
(December 21,2021) Recycling batteries for a better future Recycle My Battery has recycled over 145,000 used batteries Every day almost 15 billion batteries are purchased to power everyday objects, most of which end up in landfills. In Edison, New Jersey, a seventh grader works tirelessly to rid the world of battery pollutants, aspiring to make the world safe from fires. Interestingly, his campaign also started when a fire at a waste plant in California caused million of dollars' worth of damage. When Sri Nihal Tammana read about it on his tenth birthday, he realised the culprit was a discarded lithium-ion battery. That became a clarion call for the 12-year-old to start a campaign to rid the Earth of used batteries. It galvanised the community, and like-minded children to begin collecting and recycling all types of batteries. Most importantly to save the planet. The little boy founded recyclemybattery.org which has grown exponentially since it began in 2019. Collaborations with Call2Recycle, today there are recycle bins in 200 US locations, and the non-profit is also working with US school superintendents, covering over 200 schools (200,000 children). [caption id="attachment_8698" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Recharge My Battery founder Sri Nihal Tammana[/caption] "I started to learn about
[caption id="attachment_8698" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Recharge My Battery founder Sri Nihal Tammana[/caption]
"I started to learn about all types of batteries, and how chemicals cause pollution when they end up in landfills, poisoning groundwater and damaging the ecosystem. I realised that our entire world is powered by batteries, and they are only going to be more widely used. I founded Recycle My Battery to address this," says the pint-sized TEDx speaker, environmentalist, eco-hero and Point of Light honouree.
His large, observant bespectacled eyes light up at the mention of science and sustainability. The winner of the NJ Governor’s Award and the Jefferson Award for his work, Nihal has a sensibility that defies his years.
The method to the research
The Woodrow Wilson student, Nihal researched on how to prevent batteries ending up in landfills, and it was a huge turning point that has been the guiding light that is slowly creating a change. "I started RMB to reduce the 15 billion batteries that are carelessly thrown away each year to zero. We have an amazing team of over 150 kids, and have achieved so much in the two years thanks to my team! We have recycled over 145,000 used batteries so far, and educated over an estimated one million people." Now, Nihal hopes to reach India with his campaign.
[caption id="attachment_8700" align="aligncenter" width="837"] Sri Nihal Tammana[/caption]
Always thinking ahead, partnering with Call2Recycle and Best Brains helped spread RMB’s wings across the US. Call2Recycle offered free battery bins while Best Brains helped right from initiation, advising on where to place battery bins in over 150 locations. Today, 145,000 used batteries have been recycled and the team has educated an estimated one million people on battery disposal, etc.
The 2009 March-born student has been STEM-inclined since he was a toddler, and thus math and science were his favourite subjects.
Infact, Nihal already had dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur even though his parents were concerned that he was too young to start an organisation. He started it, anyway. At age 10, news of fires and lithium-ion batteries put him well and truly on this path. His younger sister is in awe while his parents who work in IT, and are extremely encouraging, especially his father, "He kept motivating me towards my dreams. Without him, I wouldn't have started my organisation!" says Nihal. Nihal loves speaking to his grandparents in Vijaywada, India, and often regales them with his stellar achievements.
From recycle to spreading awareness
The TedX speaker admits sheepishly to being extremely nervous on the podium, and it took two months of practice to prepare for his TedX speech. The Eco-Hero awardee is a 12-year-old who has only just begun tackling world problems. With the help of more than a 145 strong childrens’ team, today RMB has placed more than 250 battery bins across the US. "We have also won 15 plus national and international awards," chirps Nihal.
The PEYA Award is what Nihal cherishes the most, One in a Million Award, NJDEP Recycling Award, Citizens Award, Nihal is thankful for the acclaim and attributes it to team effort, and the partners who supported his dream.
If STEM subjects bring a glint to Nihal's eyes, he is also a proficient artist, and has won national awards for his distinctive drawings, one of which is shared below. "I have loved art and drawing since I was little. It was super creative and fun to draw, and impress everyone. I drew frenetically just to pass time - 100s of drawing, and I have gotten many awards," says the achiever who seems earnest and adult in demeanour.
The boy who has received appreciation from New Jersey state senators Bob Menendez, Sam Thompson, Patrick Diegnan and Vin Gopal, and Edison Mayor Thomas Lankey, exudes a wisdom beyond his years, and is grateful for their support which has furthered RMB.
As other children were gaming or playing tag, Nihal went CEO hunting to ask for support. That came in the form of kudos from Kevin Kassekert, COO of Redwood Materials, among many others.
Experience and impact has already given Tammana the depth to charter new paths in his life. His research-minded proclivity takes him forward, "I tend to do research to learn more about the environment, waste management, and recycling! When I see the battery bin is full, I feel very proud that people are using the bins that we place," says Nihal who still has ample amount of schoolwork to do, his first priority. After that comes RMB work, and of course, research.
[caption id="attachment_8702" align="aligncenter" width="772"] Sri Nihal Tammana[/caption]
Busy increasing RMB's influence across the US, the 12-year-old was also hired to research on waste management by an Indian firm. "I was recently hired as the youngest research lead at the Delhi-based EnviroVigyan (started by a professor and some PhDs). I want to do more research to learn more about waste management now," he adds. He also blogs for them.
Higher goals, ahoy
Egged on in no small measure by parents in IT, Nihal now has a clear goal in mind - of studying at an Ivy League like Stanford, and learn about environmental science, business development, science, space science and math.
For budding STEM students, his advice is, "Always go after your dreams and never give up! Failure leads to success!"
Having the right mentors opened a whole world of learning and opportunities, and Nihal is grateful for the guidance of Professor Dr Madigosky, Call2Recycle ex-CEO Carl Smith and his dad who "has guided and supported me throughout my journey to bring down the 15 billion batteries thrown away each year to 0!" he smiles.
It's not all work and no play, with doodling giving him the space to rejuvenate, playing and developing video games adding some fun, yet on any given day, reading and researching touts all else.
[caption id="attachment_8696" align="aligncenter" width="541"] A doodle by Sri Nihal Tammana[/caption]
"I practice martial arts, and recently got my black belt in Taekwondo. I love to learn about space. My dream is to become a space scientist. I hope to learn lessons from space to help us improve life on Earth," says the boy who has his own YouTube channel Learn with Nihal, where he educates through videos.
"In my spare time I draw and have also won some national awards for my work. I like to develop and play games on Roblox with my friends," smiles the boy who recently came third at a school geography competition, the GeoBee.
The world is his oyster, and Nihal is already thinking ahead, about how alkaline batteries help grow corn (which even the author did not know), and, a hopeful wish, "I want to start another company that can develop clean batteries in the years to come."
(June 7, 2023) Pratishtha Deveshwar was just 13 when a tragic car accident left her paralysed down the waist. The sudden turn of events left her confined to a hospital bed for four months and subsequently forced her to spend three years bedridden. Returning to school was an impossible dream at first as her school wasn't wheelchair accessible. Moreover, people around them had given their verdict that her life was over, asking her parents to buy her a shop in her hometown of Hoshiarpur in Punjab to at least earn a livelihood. But Pratishtha defied societal expectations and embarked on an extraordinary journey of education, empowerment, and advocacy. The Diana Award recipient is the first Indian wheel-chair user to study at Oxford University, along with being one of the youngest and most vocal disability rights activists in India. It was a normal life for Pratishtha until October 2011, when owing to a spinal cord injury she was left paralysed. She woke up in the ICU days later to immense pain in her hands and chest but couldn't feel anything below her waist. She was told by the doctor, 'You will never be able to walk again.' At that moment she
' At that moment she felt her dreams, life, and aspirations had come to an end. She was later shifted to a normal hospital bed where she ended up spending the next four months. But due to the gravity of the situation, she was bedridden for another four years, until she decided to take charge of her life. Being written off by society, she knew the only way to get out of it was through the power of education. "People kept telling my parents to face facts and buy me a shop, so I might at least have a livelihood. Never mind what I wanted: career, marriage, travel; all these things were unthinkable according to conventional wisdom," the Global Indian wrote in Somerville Magazine.
But her parents encouraged her to study as she worked with her teachers and friends to find a way to continue her studies. She finally found a system and worked hard to clear her Class 12 boards. "I always knew that I could overcome my situation only with education. So, after 12th, I told my parents that I don’t want to live inside the four walls of my home anymore; I deserve better. I applied to LSR, and got admission! That changed my life,” she told HT. However, it came with its share of prejudices as many people didn't find logic in sending a wheelchair-bound girl to the university. "Those people just saw the wheelchair; they never looked beyond it to the contents of my mind or my heart. It was around this time that I first thought of advocacy not just for myself but for all people with disabilities - of which there are 28 million in India."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaGnzeGZ8y4
LSR gave her the wings as for the first time she found a safe space to be herself, surrounded by a supportive community of women who encouraged her to share her story. This was her first step towards activism, and it started right outside the gates of her college in Delhi. She met people who wanted to listen to her story and share theirs. But it was one encounter that moved her the most. "A shopkeeper invited me to visit his shop and make it wheelchair accessible. All the alterations I suggested were completed within five days of my visit. This, I learned, is how activism works: by meeting people, listening to their stories, and telling your own, until you find common ground."
Soon she began sharing her story at other DU colleges and slowly started getting more attention. She led to an invitation to speak at the UN, and it snowballed as she was then asked to join the Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok and later in Nairobi. With each platform, she got an opportunity to create awareness which won her the Diana Award in 2021 for her activism for disability rights. This led her to the gates of Oxford University for a Masters in Public Policy, making her the first Indian wheelchair-user to study at Oxford University. "I realized that the cause of constant marginalization of persons with disabilities (PwDs) is the lack of inclusive policies, hence I opted for Public Policy. I want to come back to India to use the experience and knowledge by facilitating policy-level changes to improve the lives of PwDs," she said.
Earlier this month , I had the incredible honour of meeting HRH Prince Charles, who commended my achievements so far and encouraged me to keep striving for success!
I am grateful to be the recipient of The Diana Award and thank every person supporting my journey! ❤️ pic.twitter.com/HdLdg1lTUW
— Pratishtha Deveshwar (@iiampratishtha) June 29, 2021
It was at Oxford that her course reinforced ideas of activism that she had built up over the years. "I had expected Public Policy to teach me how to use the system to leverage change. It asked us to look beyond the numbers and create the right solution by empathising with the affected people," she added.
The 23-year-old was honoured by the UK Parliament with the India-UK Achievers Award recently for her outstanding contribution to society. She is back in India and keen to share the things she has learnt in the last few years. "While I may be the first wheelchair-using Indian to attend Oxford, I don't intend to be the last."
(June 7, 2022) For a young seventh grader, losing seven close family members to heart ailments within a year was a traumatising experience. Her grief soon turned into a quest to discover the root cause. The findings led to a startling revelation - the lack of heart donors. The obliviousness towards organ donation as a whole prompted Seher Taneja to start Abhigyata in 2018. "When I started researching, I didn't know much about organ donation, and I realised I wasn't the only one. On digging deep, I found that for every 50,000 heart transplants needed, we don't even get 10. It shook me, and I decided to create awareness," Seher tells Global Indian. What began as a dialogue with family and friends has now turned into a movement of sorts that has reached over 10,000 people. Her first presentation was at her school (Springdales, Delhi) to "plant the seed of organ donation in young minds." The 17-year-old believes that it's important to change the mindset from a young age. Calling the problem deep-rooted, the teen changemaker says that talking about death is almost considered blasphemy. "There is so much stigma around death that it isn't easy to make people open
ar-old believes that it's important to change the mindset from a young age. Calling the problem deep-rooted, the teen changemaker says that talking about death is almost considered blasphemy. "There is so much stigma around death that it isn't easy to make people open up to the idea of organ donation," adds the Diana Award winner.
Born to a paediatrician father and an anaesthesiologist mother, Seher comes from a family of doctors. However, the tragedy that struck home led her on a mission to create awareness on organ donation. "I knew I needed to be well-read and well-versed on the topic, I couldn't misstate facts. That's when I came across a program by Dr Smita Mishra," reveals Seher who calls Mishra her mentor as she helped her understand the myths and the statistics around organ donation. "I started with high school students between 9th and 12 grade. But by 2019, I wanted to create a ripple effect, that's when I came up with a proper plan to reach out to different schools in Delhi," says the changemaker, who began building a team with an army of volunteers.
Covid-19 took Abhigyata online to a larger audience in 2020. "Our first webinar had Vasanthi Ramesh, the director of NOTTO (National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation), and Pallavi Kumar of MOHAN (Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network) as the speakers. The session was aimed at helping youngsters clear their doubts and also to bust myths around organ donation," says Class 12 student who also collaborated with various NGOs during that time. "With the pandemic taking a toll on mental health, the webinar was a blessing in disguise as it helped me channelise my energy into something productive," says the teenager who won the Student Leadership Award 2020 by the Indian Academy of Paediatrics.
Empowering youth during the pandemic
The initiative led her to win the Diana Award in 2021 along with the Tale of Humankind. Started in 2019 to engage and empower the youth, it has worked on 10 campaigns so far ranging from mental health to climate change to menstruation and gender equality. "We are bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be, with the help and guidance of experts from their respective fields. We want to bring a sense of purpose in youngsters with our initiative," says Seher, who has learnt to be more empathetic in the process. The innovator adds that the years have made her more accountable for her actions toward the planet.
Innovator at heart
The social changemaker is an innovator at heart. A STEM girl, Seher has a handful of innovations to her credit including the mobile toilet - a sensor-based automated technology to improve sanitation in an eco-friendly manner. But it was SWAR - smart gloves that convert sign language into text and voice - that earned her a spot in the Top 20 at the ATL Tinkering Marathon 2019 and was later selected for Atal Incubation Centre's Student Innovator Program 3.0. Again, SWAR was conceptualised at home where she witnessed her grandfather struggling with hearing loss. "He was retreating into a shell and was uncomfortable making any conversation. To help him, I started researching more on it and found startling facts in 2018. India is home to 18 million people with hearing impairments with only 250 interpreters. Since the majority doesn't understand sign language, it creates a divide," explains Seher who wanted to bridge the gap with her prototype. "The sensors on the gloves help convert sign language into text and speech by using a smartphone," describes the teenager who has filed for the patent.
The idea didn't just impress commerce and industries minister Piyush Goyal, it also found her a place in Startup India. "I am reaching out to corporate companies. SWAR will be launched in the market soon," says an excited Seher who is moving to the University of Pennsylvania to pursue the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology. With an aim to revolutionise the healthcare sector, she plans to launch her startup in near future. "It's time we stop blaming the people in power and become a shareholder in bringing about change," says the innovator, who loves chilling with her parents and friends.
Over the past two years, 14-year-old Ayush Singh has found himself flooded with job offers, each trying to outdo one other with exorbitant pay packets and an assortment of benefits. His 10-hour course on Free Code Camp is nearing the coveted 'one million views' mark - "It's at 800k so far," he ventures, with the shy grin that rarely leaves his face. The course was even recommended by MIT on their official Twitter page. As his peers navigate the heady ups and downs of being a teenager, Ayush is already at the forefront of the proverbial bleeding edge, a known name in the Machine Learning and data science space. Thousands of students have attended his ML001 course, he has been a data scientist intern at Artifact and he is one of the world's youngest data scientists and Machine Learning Engineers – when we speak, he had just quit his job at ZenML, a German startup that 'productivises' machine learning and was all set to begin a new stint as a data scientist at Replayed. A recent YouTube chat with content creator Ishan Sharma, enticingly titled "14-year-old Prodigy Coder says IIT Bombay is his backup," has already neared the half-million views
ews mark - and it's not just clickbait, either. He receives plenty of advice telling him to take the IIT route and he shuns it all. "I will definitely go to college, I want the experience, but I would like it to be MIT or Stanford," Ayush tells Global Indian in an interview. The big ticket offers come in from the MLOps companies around the world, Ayush likes to pick and choose, preferring startups to bigger firms and foreign companies to Indian ones.
He’s an unusual prodigy. Until the pandemic, he lived an affluent, suburban life with his family in Patna. When Covid-19 hit and businesses collapsed, his father was among those who took a fall, leaving the family in a very tough situation, financially. "We went from having every luxury in the world to wondering where our next meal was coming from and watching relatives and friends distance themselves," Ayush says. The situation was dire - the IIT-JEE route didn’t seem like an option.
So, Ayush got to work. He began cold emailing founders and networking on LinkedIn, trying his hand first at web and android development, both spaces crowded by enthusiastic teenagers. There was no dearth of critics telling him not to enter the tech space, that he "wouldn't even get ₹10,000 per month." Luckily, he chose not to listen. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are budding, complex spaces, requiring skills that can't be learned through a couple of crash courses or on YouTube. He did spend a lot of time on the latter "but there's so much more to learn than can be done through videos," Ayush explains. "I would read numerous books, even on a single topic, to bring myself to a professional level."
He began by learning Python, picking up a copy of Python For Geeks (Muhammad Asif), graduating to O'Reily's Robust Python and then to more advanced design patterns. He also had to learn the Math. "I did Algebra, Linear Algebra, Calculus from Khan Academy," Ayush explains. He found he had a knack for data science and machine learning - "From coding, I jumped to machine learning and deep learning." So far, he's read over 20 books on the subject.
He dedicated “24 hours a day to do this." He would wake up at 5 am and spend anywhere between 10 and 16 hours studying, apart from the five or six hours that he had to give to school. When the time came to return to campus, he would carry his books with him.
Wooing employers
Building a profile and upping his skills was one thing but landing a job was a whole new challenge. He could impress his potential employers with his skills but predictably enough, was told that he was too young. Cold-emailing worked well and he chose startups believing they’d be open to taking a chance. That’s how he found a post by ZenML on LinkedIn. "I emailed the founder, Adam. I highlighted my skills and although I didn’t know much about MLOps at the time, I had prepared a project that aligned with the company's aim." The founder replied and Ayush was put through two sets of interviews - a coding interview and a 'take home challenge'. He got the job and is now experienced at conducting interviews himself. What's the trick, though?
Unleashing the entrepreneur within
His ability to think differently, learn new skills and get companies to hire him at the age of 13 is, arguably, a great entrepreneurial talent in itself. But he has struck out on his own - aside from his full-time job, school and the freelance assignments he takes on, Ayush is also building his own startup, Antern with co-founders Tushar Vaswani and Priyanshu Bhattacharjee. He describes Antern as the ‘Netflix of Education’. "We're leveraging AI and ML for the education space," he says. Taking off from the massive success of his MIT-recommended course on Free Code Camp, the company is launching 'nano degrees', certificate courses that are in-depth versions of the free course. The company launched on June 20 and also involves an AR/VR master course.
"I started with a basic machine learning course and thought, let's do this on a large scale," Ayush says. He met his co-founder, Tushar, through the YouTube comment box. Antern harnesses an AI assistant that can assess a student’s performance every week and answer complex Codex questions.
Ayush is also building Schema, a platform that caters to content creators. More than half of content creators don't understand the analytical tools that gauge performance. Schema will retrieve data by analysing all social media platforms to provide a comprehensive report on performance and how the customers are responding. "You will also be able to segment your customers and target them specifically," he says.
He also prefers to work with companies abroad. "Indian companies treat you like a kid," says Ayush. "Even if they hire you, they give you repetitive tasks that they don't want to do. At ZenML, I was treated like a core member; I was even involved in the company's retreat where the founders were making decisions. They focus on your skills and give you unique tasks. Indian startups tend to focus on their growth but companies like ZenML know that their growth involves mine too."
Staying grounded
He sees himself "building my own multi-million-dollar company" five years down the line. Entrepreneurship is the plan. His father tells him, "Your work shouldn't be just for one family. Do it for 1000 families, just like Ratan Tata." Ayush has kept his word, helping young people find good jobs.
At home, his parents are immensely proud of their talented son. They advise him to keep going, even when he fails and to remain humble. "Because I have seen rock bottom and I will never forget what that was like.”
The future of ML, AI and Deep Learning
It's a promising area, Ayush says. "Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI will create millions of jobs all over the world. But they won't be able to find talented developers." Companies might be willing to pay handsome salaries but expect something in return. "It's not just about learning some coding," he says. "There is a paucity of talented developers. People who say they know ML know how to use an API and build an algorithm but it's important to know what works where. And when an algorithm doesn't work, how do you tweak your data to make it happen?"
He can't stress the importance of domain knowledge enough. "The jobs are there and will pay well but will remain untaken. You can't succeed in AI and ML if you don't know Maths because that's what it is, at its core. And then, you need to code. It's not enough to just use the buzzwords and think you know the subject."