How I discovered my passion.

• A wise man once said, “Your passion is not something you find; it’s something you uncover within yourself by chasing what makes your soul come alive.”
• Well, if that’s true, then it’s safe to say I uncovered my passion multiple times throughout my bachelor’s studies.
• Which led me to gain substantial experience through numerous internships, projects, and club work. Each new challenge and curiosity led me to dive deeper, turning fleeting interests into lasting expertise. I not only honed my technical skills but also developed a deep appreciation for how technology drives modern businesses forward.

How It All Began -

• I am not sure if this comes across as cliché, but my mother has been a profound influence in my life, exemplifying hard work, dedication, and perseverance. Despite numerous challenges, she qualified as a Chartered Accountant to support our family. Her sacrifices taught me the importance of focus, independence, and the value of education
• Building on these foundational lessons, I stepped into my first year of college on November 21, 2022, with my inaugural class: Introduction to Programming in C. Initially, I wanted to stay ahead of the instructor just to better understand the course material. To achieve this, I watched tutorials and practiced problems every single day. I fell in love with the journey and the progress I was making. I accelerated my learning and finished the entire syllabus in just two weeks.
• After that, I started learning Python by making games and automating boring processes. By doing so aided me in understanding python as a language and also foundation to start my journey in deep learning. I then gradually shifted my focus to understand the mathamatics behind them. This was fun until I built something interesting but I couldn't show it to anyone as I could only interact with it through a terminal. I needed a way to bring my ideas to people.
• That's how I got into Web development. I dedicated countless hours to mastering the fundamentals of frontend development. I refined my skills to the point where translating ideas into elegant websites. Later, I've explored Backend and DevOps, where I enjoyed system design, building cloud architectures, and optimizing backend systems to scale applications efficiently. What started as a necessity quickly became another passion.
• I must say it was at IITH I realized the true potential of technology. I became actively involved in several technological clubs and contributed to a variety of projects. I wanted to to get a taste of IoT development so I worked hands on with arduino, microcontrollors and various sensors. Notably, I worked on cool hardware projects involving gestures to communicate wirelessly with various devices. Firstly, a gesture controlled car. Secondly, AI powered gesture recoginition system utilizing motion sensors where we capture and analyse data from a Google Wear OS wrist watch in real time and finally, IoT-based fall detection using a NodeMCU, MPU6050 sensor, Flutter and Websockets.
• Gesture Controlled Car.
  Fall Detection System.
• As I reached the end of my second year of college, I got promoted to an overall head of lambda, software club of IIT Hyderabad along alongside Kartheek Tamanna, Kushagra Gupta and Varun Gupta. Notably, One of our most impactful projects was a cab-sharing portal for the campus, which quickly attracted over 10,000 sign-ups and hundreds of active monthly users.
• A picture from 2024 with my Lambda Co-Heads, right after conducting a session on Docker.
  My genius friend and I hacking our way through our college's attendance app.

Falling in love with my work -

• At the start of my third year, I began my entrepreneurial journey by joining the founding team of Picapool, aiming to solve overbuying by connecting people to pool resources for similar products. We validated our idea by interviewing 2,000 individuals in Delhi and Mumbai, which helped me develop empathy and a deep understanding of diverse perspectives. This experience was my first exposure to large-scale networking, helping me cultivate resilience and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively.
• I wanted to be a valuable asset to the company, so I binge-watched courses on AlgoExpert's Systems Design, Flutter, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, and Docker & Kubernetes. On August 17, 2023, we began development after expanding the team with some of the best developers from IIT Hyderabad.
• A picture taken from my hostel room during discussions on Picapool's app flow.
• I took on the responsibility of leading the team and converted my room into a makeshift office, lining the walls with whiteboards labeled App Flow, Weekly Tasks, Ideation, and Challenges List. We worked tirelessly, often until 5 AM. Every day was a dev night, and it was the best team environment I had ever experienced.
• Handling both frontend and DevOps, I worked jointly with my team on client-server integrations and maintained active loop with the designer to ensure all ideas were accurately translated into designs.
• A picture taken at Google Hyderabad Office, with me sitting near the heart of Google.
• I delivered the product in a month and launched it on the Play Store on September 17th. The result? Picapool won first place ₹15,00,000 with no equity dilution in Suzuki's Global Seed Innovation Challenge on September 23, 2023.
• Save more with Picapool.
  September 24th 2023.

Meeting Viv (Vivasvan Krishna) -

• This was even before starting of picapool, I got a message from my friend that changed the tragectory of my life:
• "Bro, U up for some freelance work? It's two webpages ka rework".
• He then introduced me to Viv, and we quickly met for a discussion regarding the work. We worked on Toonsutra, a nascent startup in its early development stages with a mission to bring comics and graphic novels from leading creators and publishers, offering them in Indian languages for the first time. My role involved building its website, which contained hundreds of images, while optimizing performance. This was my first time working in a professional setting, and it was Viv who helped me communicate with the Toonsutra team, navigate difficult situations, and grow professionally.
• Over time, we continued working on multiple projects, notably Pinklist's Pinksabha- it is an interactive platform that empowers users to explore the stances of 161 Lok Sabha MPs on LGBTQIA+ issues. Additionally, we participated in the EMC Glocal Pitch Competition by Musashino University and IIT Hyderabad, where we became finalists. We showcased a privacy-first note-taking app with on-device AI to an audience of Indian and Japanese professors.
• Musashino University x IIT Hyderabad.
• Despite never meeting in person, our friendship grew stronger while working together. I stayed in touch with him even while working on Picapool. It was during this time that my entrepreneurial passion ignited, and I conveyed to Viv my intent to start something new and something he was excited to be a part of. We discussed my interest in sustainability, explored and brainstormed ideas. Our ideation sessions, combined with an open offer from a carbon credit trader from Switzerland, helped us navigate the complexities of the carbon credit market and the sustainability policies of nations globally and that's how Carbon Earth was born.
• One thing I liked about him is that, even though he's much better than me in many aspects, he never tries to complement me. Instead, he reminds me that I’m already whole in my own way. That approach gave me the freedom to grow, learn, and improve myself without feeling overshadowed.

Inter IIT Tech Meet

• Just recently, in December 2024, I led a 7-member team at the Inter IIT Tech Meet, representing my college at IIT Bombay. We presented a solution for the Indian Space Research Organisation challenge and developed a Google Earth equivalent for the Moon.
• Day of presentation.
  My team.
  IIT Hyderabad's trophies.
• During the same event, I had the opportunity to present Carbon Earth at the Pan IIT Tech Expo, where I encountered a startup born out of a biotechnology club. They had engineered a bioorganism capable of capturing atmospheric CO₂ and rapidly converting it into limestone. I was blown away when I realized the potential of this field to radically transform the world and improve people's lives.
• This discovery pushed me to explore not only microbial but also terrain and marine mechanisms for CO₂ capture. Despite their promising impact on the climate, many startups in this sphere struggle to scale due to capital constraints. I see an opportunity to change that by helping them generate carbon credits for every ton of CO₂ they mitigate, using tools that quantify CO₂ sequestration. This realization drives me to delve deeper into genetics and systems biology, determined to do whatever it takes to turn this concept into reality.

Impact all of these on me

• Today, I see myself as an inquisitive, highly motivated, and ambitious individual who is unafraid of taking risks and embracing new challenges with unwavering optimism. Even when stepping out of my comfort zone, I remain driven and perseverant, pushing forward until I master whatever comes my way. Furthermore, my projects and internships are a testimony to my remarkable analytical skills, creativity, and technical expertise, showcasing my exceptional ability to apply theoretical concepts to real-world challenges.