[Super Student] Life is never fair. Man up and do your thing anyway- The inspiring story of Pulkit Madan

"The main reason people fail is that they get happy with what they have achieved till date. I believe one should always move to newer grander goals once the old ones are scaled. You should keep moving forward and help the world see new things."

No this is not an excerpt from Seth Godin's talk in the Valley. This is what our 18 year old prodigy told me when I asked him how he feels about having come so far at such a young age. "I feel just the way I felt when we got started," was his prompt reply. I knew, right then, that this was going to be a really special interview.

Pulkit Madan, is an 18 year old coder. But no, he doesn't write "Hello World" programs at some local college. This young Lucknow lad codes to make life easier for other techies and web folks. He codes to create something meaningful. And with two hugely popular startups under his belt already, he is surely going places.

His romance with the world of coding began in a rather peculiar fashion when he was 14. There was a 2 week course on Flash that he had joined just for fun. At the end of it, they had to make a small movie , which he won first place for. From Flash, he went to Photoshop, and then HTML. "I still remember my first small HTML site," he says reminiscing about his first fling with the web.

Sometime in his 9th standard, his health started deteriorating, and due to a strange kind of allergy and chronic itching, he wasn't able to attend school, sometimes for prolonged periods. Then came the 10th board exams and the principal rejected his form due to excessive holidays. The vice-principal informed him that the board authorities were fine by it and he would be allowed to sit. But politics kicked in and due to some reason, he wasn’t allowed to take his exams.

With no option in sight, he joined NIOS (National Institute of Open Schooling). Things were looking bleak, and most people would probably concede to fate. But not Pulkit. He used this free time at his disposal to learn and practise code. It was around this time, that the proverbial coding bug bit him, and bit him for good.

By the age of 18, he has two startups up and running.Backit.co, one of his startups that was previously launched in 2011 under a different name is a one click website/database backup service which automatically scans the website/databases for changes every 15 minutes and if a change is detected it is automatically backed up and saved. It also lets the user restore his website back in time or migrate it to some other place in just a click.

Coffee.io, another startup of his, is a project management tool for developers. His experience with existing project management tools while he used to freelance, was anything but good. Coffee.io support 75 languages, and helps you organize your projects, and collaborate with other developers and even your clients.

It was launched in private beta in October 2012, and after working on a few basic glitches and adding a few features that the beta users had recommended, the public version was set to release on 12th May. They were pretty pleased with what they had to present.

On the 11th, in one cruel move, life took away Pulkit's life source. His father who had been with him right from day one, who had been both his mentor and investor in his entrepreneurial journey could not live to see his son's grand success.

Just after 13 days of his father’s demise, Pulkit manned up and launched Coffee.io on 24th May 2013.

Talking about his father, his personal hero, he says "The biggest learning from him was that we should never sell an incomplete or defective product and always sell the product at a price which the product is worth of." With the passion and temperament of a Valley whiz kid, and the value system and business acumen of an Ambani, this kid has great mountains to scale. We, at YourStory, wish him well in his journey ahead.

"Age doesn't really matter. Don't keep yourself limited because of it or anything else. You might end up losing really good opportunities around you if you do." ~Pulkit.

If you think you deserve to feature in this column or know anyone who does, you can drop a mail at ganesh[at]yourstory[dot]in