[Super Student ] A crowd-funded startup innovating in Applied Machine Learning and autonomous navigation - Rohit Sant

Today there are millions of engineers passing out of colleges in India. To create a niche for oneself and stand out in the crowd is something which almost every engineer dreams about. When I first had a chat with Rohit Sant of BITS Pilani, he appeared to be a normal engineer, but it was soon evident that he has many tales to tell. Currently doing his Bachelors in Electronics, Rohit’s work has mainly been in robotics and artificial intelligence. He tells us that he enjoys what he does, which we feel is very much important for any entrepreneur.

BrainBought

Rohit co-founded a startup named BrainBought in his second year which began as a simple insight and learning opportunity in the field of Applied Machine Learning. He just kept on building; and, now, two long years later, the startup is still building amazing products. Rohit tells us that it has been a tremendous journey, with many learnings along the way. He also remarks that starting up is a humbling and immensely rewarding experience that he believes everybody should go through at least once in their lives.

Hexapod

Other than BrainBought, much of Rohit’s time, over the last three years, has been invested in a project on autonomous navigation, building a six-legged robot, a hexapod. And then developing an algorithm that manages to adapt the robot’s walking patterns, style and movement depending on the characteristics of the terrain. He talks about the many applications of this in varied fields; for example, what wonders could this algorithm do, applied to a ‘smart’ prosthetic leg. Hence they got a provisional patent on a part of this algorithm.Funding

For BrainBought’s funding they approached Wishberry.in and decided to give it a shot, as it was a first time for both the parties. It was a great success, and they fulfilled their initial requirement of Rs 2.5 lakh through crowd-funding. Rohit adds that they are India’s first crowd-funded startup.

Education

In a market like India, where there is huge interest in stock markets and not enough knowledge to the newcomers, there is great scope for huge losses for people. So, BrainBought decided to share the knowledge that the team had cumulated. Now, they have designed a course structure and a quizzing system in an interactive website that takes the boredom out of learning about stocks. They have already got over 250 registrations on the website. The University of Investing, BrainBought’s entity, is completely free, and they are sure to keep it that way in the future!

When asked about his views on education, Rohit comments that he won’t go ranting about how the education system needs to change. We’re in it; we might as well deal with it. One thing that we are not giving our students is a real opportunity for innovation.

Putting it in a different and candid manner, our country has all the right ingredients for making ‘Gulab Jamuns,’ but our education system is trying to make ‘Jalebis’!