Saubhagya Vardhan

Unlike his friends who are preparing for their class XI exams, Lucknow-based Saubhagya Vardhan, a student of Noida’s National Institute of Open Schooling, expects to be attending classes at Stanford University, USA, this autumn. By virtue of his excellent grades — the highest grade in four of five subjects — in the AP (Advanced Placement) exam written in May 2013, Saubhagya walked away a winner with a “direct ticket” into the bachelor of applied sciences programme of the globally top-ranked university.
Early last year Saubhagya, a student of Lucknow’s top-rated City Montessori School (CMS), Gomti Nagar, cleared the class X CISCE (Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations) exam with flying colours, averaging 96 percent.

The only child of Sabharaj Singh, superintendent of police, and his lawyer wife Rashmi, this science genius attributes his near perfect scores in physics, chemistry and maths in the AP exam to the “extraordinary encouragement” he received from his parents and science and maths teachers — Tripti Saxena and Brijeh — at CMS. “My parents never denied me any reading and study materials and my science teachers at CMS gave me full liberty to access the science labs for experimentation,” says Saubhagya, who was a finalist in the online Google science fair 2012 competition. “My online project guide and mentor Prof. O Reise of the University of Regensberg, Germany, recommended me to the physics department of Stanford University,” he discloses.

True to form, this clear-headed youngster has already mapped out his future. “After completing my bachelors in applied sciences, I intend getting a Masters in general physics and mechanical engineering and press on for a doctorate. I need to be highly knowledgeable to invent things and find solutions for making this world a better place,” he says.
Wind beneath your wings!

Apoorv Srivastava (Lucknow)

Brothers kumaran

Shravan Kumaran (14) and his younger sibling Sanjay (12), promoters of Chennai-based mobile applications company GoDimensions Pvt. Ltd (regd. 2011), are surely India’s youngest and most famous company directors.

Class IX and VII students of Chennai’s highly rated Vael’s Billabong-High International School, they have developed seven applications for Apple and three for the Google Android playstore, which focus on games, education and lifestyle. These apps include Catch Me Cop, Alphabet Board, Prayer Planet, Colour Pallete, Emergency Booth, Super Hero, Jetpack EI 5 and Car Racing which together have been downloaded over 48,000 times in 55 countries.

The children of IT professional Kumaran Surendran and journalist Jyotilakshmi, the brothers clambered aboard the ICT (information communication technology) bandwagon in their early years. Shravan started with Paint and Games at age five and to encourage his interest and curiosity, his father taught him the basics of programming when he was seven. Nothing loath, Sanjay also picked up the basics of ICT and over the next four years, they mastered Basic, Java and Objective C. “We tested 150 apps before developing our first game app and when we were ready to upload it, we launched our own company,” says Shravan.

Focus and perseverance are clearly the success mantra of this precocious duo, with the result that they are able to balance school, research, and business development while making time for lectures and presentations to huge audiences on academic and industry platforms. Among them: IIM-Bangalore, TedX events, CII conferences, and SAP Tech University, Bangalore.

Looking to the future, the brothers are focused on doing well in academics even as they continue to develop apps and grow their business enterprise. “We read a lot and keep ourselves updated on all new mobile phones, iPads and tablets that enter the market. Currently we are developing a new application — Go app — which will provide technical updates on all apps developed by us. However, we are only too well aware that excelling academically is of prime importance as we aspire to get into the country’s best professional colleges,” says Sanjay.
Way to go, boys!

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)