A class XII student of Noida-based Pathways World School, Evan Luthra (18) is a ‘computer scientist’ in his own right and make. Over the past four years, he has developed over 30 apps including StudySocia, Awenest, El Design, Geek Platter, Digital Strategist, etc, for mobile phone and other companies such as Google India, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows mobile etc. And beyond being a technophile, blogger and innovator, Evan is also a precocious serial entrep-reneur having promoted several start-ups under the name and style of the Evan Luthra Group, managed by a handful of employees and six friends. Moreover he has become a popular conference and seminar circuit speaker invited by education institutions, TED and Google conferences in India.
After finishing Plus Two this summer, Evan plans to sign up with a US university and major in software development, to transform his ideas into useful businesses to hopefully “make this world a better place to live in’’.
Evan began his cyber journey in 2008 when he was a 13-year-old student of the Lotus Valley International School where he completed secondary school in 2011. The same year his father, Satinder Singh, a fashion designer-cum-garment exporter, had launched a call centre business hosting 200 computers and accessories which subsequently failed to take off and had to be shut down. “My father had bought a large number of computers which he couldn’t sell. So, I started tinkering with them and took more than a dozen of them apart to study their structure, compo-sition and applications,” recalls Evan.
With active support and encour-agement from his parents, even if not his teachers who disapproved of his attendance record, he switched to Pathways World School in 2011 because of the excellent economics and computer science curriculum that the IB (Inter-national Baccalaureate) programme offers. In Pathways, a blog he began and subsequently linked to his apps quickly recorded 5 lakh page hits and downloads. That’s when he caught the attention of biggies like Google in 2012, who invited him to speak at a conf-erence in Delhi. Though Evan has a great business model, his father feels his plans can wait till he completes his higher secondary and university education.
“My mobile phone app StudySocial. Inc is for students who spend hours on social networking sites. It encourages collaborative learning with chat options while Awenest facilitates dissemination of information about corruption and the corrupt. People can post information reports anonymously. These are read by thousands of people including officials and media, who in turn can investigate them,’’ says Evan.
Way to go, Bro!
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Maitreya Wagh
Writing a book is a long, tedious process meant for grown-ups but Mumbai lad Maitreya Wagh is already an author, at age 14. His debut fiction novel titled Investigations Redefined: The Family Fork (Power Publishers, Rs.299) a crime and suspense thriller — released at Crossword book store, Grant Road, Mumbai on January 28 — is moving up the Mumbai best-seller list.
Born in Mumbai, Maitreya spent his early years in Australia and developed a broad international outlook. When he was just five years old, his parents Vaibhav, an engineer with telecomm-unication giant AT&T, and homemaker mother Archana, signed him up for a writer’s workshop conducted by Phil Kettle, author of the Too Cool series. “When I was seven, I set myself the goal of becoming a published author within the next ten years. With the publication of The Family Fork early this year, I’ve beaten the deadline by three years,’’ he says.
Investigations Redefined — a 260-page thriller — recounts the adventures of siblings Mark and Hershel whose college days are filled with adventure and crime busting. The brothers are on vacation in Paris when they run into a bunch of dangerous criminals. “My childhood visits to some of the major cities of the world has helped me understand foreign cultures and human behaviour,” says Maitreya.
Currently a class VIII student of Mumbai’s Gokuldham High School and Junior College, Maitreya is really excited about his first novel which was rejected by all major publishers before it was accepted by the Kolkata-based Power. “It’s very thrilling to be a young author, but it has also changed my perspective towards writing. Now instead of just writing for my own enjoyment, I have to write to please my publishers and readers. This requires lots of research, reflection and re-writing,’’ says Maitreya who has started writing his second novel — also a crime and suspense thriller.
Although writing is his first passion, the young author intends to study engineering after class XII, while continuing to write for personal and public pleasure and satisfaction. Meanwhile he has assigned the entire proceeds of his first novel to the Bangalore-based India Literacy Project, a not-for-profit organisation which supports education and literacy NGOs.
Praveer Sinha (Mumbai)