Education
Small wonder, Tanay Kothari from DPS RK Puram, brings friends closer
This youngster has achieved beyond his age. While his pals were competing at video games, he was into game coding. Now, at age 16, he has set up his own startup.
With startups being the flavour of the season, this young IT-obsessed student from Delhi Public School, RK Puram has become an entrepreneur with the development of his app. Proximity. That’s what he calls his venture, a friend finder that helps one locate friends in strange lands.
Meet Tanay Kothari.
Class 12.
Coder since age 12, class 7.
With 36/36, among the top performers at American College Testing exam.
Has cracked Informatics and Linguistics Olympiads, soon to start with training programmes in Chennai and Bangalore.
Has completed 17 undergrad courses from Stanford, MIT, UPenn in computer science and maths.
Youngest Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer.
Can programme in 20 languages.
Has developed many applications.
Phew!
And if that isn’t it, he is a singer, can play the harmonium, guitar and keyboard, regularly volunteers at an NGO, and, hold your breath, makes time for a game of squash or swimming.
And this is just a gist of all that Tanay Kothari does!
With his forte in programming, he has researched and written a paper on diagnosis methods for early stage cancer and is now trying to build software for it. That said Tanay, along with his team, has earlier been selected as Indian representative for a NASA project in which the team had to design space settlements.
Coding since class 7, Tanay first tried it with Windows and, realising its limitations, soon moved to other platforms. “In class 9, I was exposed to other programming languages and have chosen to immerse myself in developing applications for iOS and Android devices,” he said in an interview.
But, of the entire list of his achievements, what has put Tanay to the fore is his startup Proximity, which helps people find friends within their proximity using their social media handles.
It was when his father, an avid traveller, talked of how he occasionally bumps into old friends at various places that he visits that the idea struck Tanay. He discussed it with Arjun Malhotra, co-founder at Investopad, where Tanay was then interning, and both of them together conceptualised Proximity. Moving on from the concept itself, the first challenge for Tanay was getting in-depth knowledge of iOS, which he did. In 5 days.
After some sleepless nights, Proximity was live and ready to help users locate friends or known people in the city of their visit and also fix up meetings. Soon, the idea of joining hands with Uber hit the co-founders, with the expectation that it would be a hit, and it was! Other than Uber, Proximity has also joined with Sinch to help promote carpooling, etc.
With no marketing plans in place, the app has already achieved 250 downloads on iOS. Android and PlayStore are in the pipeline and expected to increase the downloading rate.
And what happens to school?
He has a ‘penchant for coding’ says Tanay, and does it ‘after school hours’. Talking to media, he said, “I don’t go for tuition or coaching. That probably helps me strike a balance between academics and Proximity.”
Some words of wisdom from the youngster:
“Complex problems can always be broken down into chunks and solved creatively, be it math, programming, or life. Embrace nothingness. Be the blank slate.”
Young but way mature than most people his age, Tanay Kothari is probably the most noted youngster in his school. And there enough reasons why.
Way to go, champ!