[Super Student] The small town boy who is all set to revolutionize mobile experience:Sujeet Mehta

Sujeet Kumar Mehta is a 22 year old guy from a small village some 3 kilometers away from Ranchi. One interaction with this guy, and you will see him overflowing with small-town-boy traits--- modest, down to earth, and ever willing to learn. All of which have worked wonderfully for him. From humble beginnings, Sujeet has come a long way .So much so that Intel has partnered with him for his latest Android app -Launchsimply. For that and so much more,this week's Super Student is- Sujeet Kumar Mehta.

When I met Sujeet and heard about the kind of projects he had done I figured he must have been into coding for a really long time. Turns out Sujeet started serious coding in his seventh semester of college- around one year ago, to be precise. A true 'hacker' in every sense of the word, he didn't wait to read all the texts before starting out in the real world. After learning the basics of Java, he started working on his own small apps. Whenever he hit road blocks he sought refuge in the wisdom of stackoverflow or blogs on the internet. As he kept reading, he kept refining his existing product and working on new ones. "If you are willing to learn, the internet has everything" he says as he talks about his early days. While I do respect the set of people who believe in the age old -- master everything before you write a line of code approach, this knew generation of coders who learn and implement on the way, has really started to intrigue me!

The Journey

A child prodigy of sorts, Sujeet had a list of amazing things to his name from his first year itself. In early March 2009, he presented a paper on a new algorithm for finding prime numbers and won first prize at BITS Pilani's techfest Apogee! Later the same year his research, which he thought of on one of his bus journeys, a new algorithm to construct a circle and find the value of pi got published in an international maths journal from Allahabad University.

In mid 2011, he moved from maths to computers , when he developed a 3D PC mathematical video game along with a group of fellow designers and and 3D and 2D developers. They completed the game towards the end of July the same year, but weren't able to monetize it because of the lack of any marketing or business knowledge in the team.

Launch Simply

But the thrill of that first encounter persisted. The thrill of having created something wonderful, working and useful, with a few lines of codes. In 2012, he launched an Android app along with his friend Archan. The app, called LaunchSimple which was covered by us in App Friday, is all set to be the next big thing. The app takes your interaction with your device to the next level. First there were keys, where you typed in. Then came the era of touchscreen. Now, Sujeet is working towards controlling your phone with gestures!

LaunchSimply is a gesture based application launcher. Instead of having to unlock your phone, click the app launcher and then click an app icon to open an app, you can simply move your phone in a particular way to launch an app. This app, which has had around 5000 downloads with a rating of 4.5, was presented at the Google Android app expo this year. His startup PrayerApp, was also among one of the finalists at Microsoft BizSparks. If you thought things probably could go better for this young kid, Intel has recently partnered with him to work on the improvement and optimization of the application. While monetization still remains an issue, there is no doubt that the work he does is going to do wonders for user experience in the future. With the right backing and mentorship, this 22 year old can go a long way.

As I draw this rather long post to a close, I would just like to point a few things out. Often in life things aren't positioned your way. And you sit there, thinking that just if this one thing was right you would have done it. The fact is, life doesn't work that way. There maybe a hundred things that will work against you, but if you have the will and passion to do it, you'll find the one thing that WILL make it work, and pursue your dream anyway.

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