Meet Indias inspiring Schoolpreneurs

Ez School Bus Locator is an innovative Android phone app invented by Arjun Santosh Kumar

Arjun Santhosh Kumar, a 15-year-old studying in Class X of Velammal Vidhyshram in Chennai, is the Founder & CEO of his company LateraLogics, a technology company which focuses on custom apps development, web development and consulting. Fascinated with science and technology, Kumar developed two award-winning apps, namely Ez School Bus Locator and iSafeGuard, at a tender age of 13.

Kumar’s inventions helped him win global recognition. He emerged as the winner of the coveted Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s App Inventor Contest in December 2013. “My dream is to establish LateraLogics as one of the most innovative and successful companies in the world. I draw inspiration from many great people like Steve Jobs and Pranav Mistry.

The inspiration/idea behind starting LateraLogics was how mobile phone apps are being used nowadays to solve critical issues and the immense possibilities they carry to make life easier. We are in the process of building a small team of designers and coders, who carry great passion for building solutions that solve a purpose,” states Kumar.

Ez School Bus Locator is an innovative Android phone app that helps parents view the location (live) of their kid’s school bus on a map and know when the school bus will reach home. On the other hand, iSafeGuard is a women and teen safety mobile app developed keeping in mind the growing instances of eve-teasing and crime against young girls and women in today’s world.

The app will help women and teens in distress to send distress calls (SOS messages) with location details on pre-set numbers of friends and family members. It will also alert local community (volunteers who have this app installed in their mobile devices) near the spot to reach out to the person in danger, without waiting for the police.

At present, Kumar is working on a robotics app and plans to create an intelligent personal assistant application that can help people respond to everyday situations in more engaging ways. Talking about the revenue model, Kumar shares, “Currently, the mobile apps are freely available, but I am working on a subscription-based (white-labelled) model to sell these apps commercially (in addition to the free version) to schools and organisations. The pricing for the subscription is yet to be decided.”

Shravan Kumaran studying in Class XI and his brother Sanjay Kumaran studying in Class IX are the youngest mobile application programmers in India

The duo, students of Vael’s Billabong High International School in Chennai. has co-founded a company called GoDimensions, a technology company with focus on developing simple solutions for the digital world. Shravan is Co-Founder & President, and Sanjay is Co-Founder & CEO of the company. They have developed seven mobile applications that are available on Apple’s App Store.

They have also created three apps for Google’s Android Play store. As per Sanjay and Shravan, these applications have got more than 60,000 downloads all together from more than 60 different countries. They draw inspiration from Steve Jobs for his user interface and Bill Gates for his marketing strategy. “Our interests in computer started at a very early age when we started to make presentations at school.

The school and teachers encouraged us to do more, sensing our keen interest in computers. At home, we started learning QBasic, then animation and gradually moved on to programming apps. Our dream to start a company that builds new gen mobile applications led us to develop application for Apple iPhone & Apple iPad,” stated Shravan and Sanjay.

Sreelakshmi Suresh, a 17-year-old girl is the youngest web designer and CEO in the world embarked into entrepreneurship at an age of 10

Sreelakshmi Suresh, winner of numerous national and international awards, established her own venture named eDesign Technologies. eDesign is a website designing company offering services like website design, web development, SEO and logo designing. She has already designed and developed more than 100 websites for various institutions and organisations including Bar Council of Kerala, Angels International, EHP India, Mammas Passion, and others.

She is studying in Class XII at Presentation Higher Secondary School, Kozhikode. “Computer is my best friend from my early childhood. When I heard about a boy who developed a website and my parents told me that I too can do that, I stepped into the world of web designing. When I was 3-years-old, I used to draw pictures using MS Paint program in my computer. I gradually learned typing alphabets and started studying web designing. In Class IV, I was entrusted with the work of developing a website for my school,” says Sreelakshmi.