She’s only 10 years old, and teaching young minds around the world how to code
Samaira Mehta, the Founder and CEO of CoderBunnyz, has designed a STEM game that is being used as a coding tool in 106 schools in the US within a year of launch.
Samaira Mehta isn’t your usual 10-year-old. This school student is the Founder and CEO of CoderBunnyz, a company that she founded at age 8. CoderBunnyz has launched a STEM game with the same name to empower children to learn to code and become leaders in tech.
At 10, Samaira, now a Grade 4 student in the San Francisco Bay Area, is drawing immense attention. The keynote speaker at the Diversity in Tech Conference hosted at Google Launchpad in August, she has been recognised by Santa Clara Board of Education. Samaira has won the Youth Entrepreneur award and been covered in over five continents and 11 countries, by media companies like Sony, Mercury News, NBC, and many others. She received an encouragement letter from then US First Lady Michelle Obama in 2016 for her skills and idea implementation.
Samaira’s tryst with coding date backs to the time when she was only eight years old. She invented the game CoderBunnyz then to help kids learn how to code. In an interview, she said,
Her STEM board game won her $2,500 and the second position at Think Thank Learning’s Pitchfest in 2016. The game’s popularity was augmented by a marketing strategy designed by her father Rakesh, an Intel engineer and former employee of Sun Microsystems. CoderBunnyz is now used in over 106 schools, Authority Magazines reports.
Samaira, who has spoken at 11 conferences, went on to conduct workshops to help children of her age to learn through the game. The same year she launched an initiative ‘Yes, 1 Billion Kids Can Code’.
In an interview with Business Insider, she said:
“In the world, there are over 1 billion kids, and there are people who are willing to donate CoderBunnyz boxes to schools, and to people all over the world who want to learn coding.”
The game is priced at $34.85. In terms of sales, Samaira said,
“We've sold 1,000 boxes, so over $35,000 and it's only been on the market for one year.”
Samaira soon decided to launch a sequel that taught artificial intelligence through coding. On the new game, she said, “Children can learn basic AI principles, concepts like training an AI model, inference, and adaptive learning. Eventually, they can use those skills to build robots.”
Samaira was helped in her second quest by her six-year-old brother Aadit. After the release, she has addressed over 60 workshops in Silicon Valley and taught over 2,000 kids so far, Business Insider reports.
A series workshop was held at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Impressed by her knowledge, Google’s Chief Culture Officer Stacy Sullivan made time to meet her.
“After my back-to-back workshops at Google headquarters, we talked for an hour. She told me I was doing great and I could come work for Google once I get out of college, Samaira recalls.”
A part of her company’s profits goes to People Assisting The Homeless (PATH), a charity through which she supports the homeless.
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