Entrepreneurship begins with curiosity and a will to change and impact the world. Hi everyone! I’m Hitarth, a 16-year old entrepreneur from Surat, Gujarat. I currently run an online platform for Gujarat Board students called, Gujju Student. I also work on many side projects like Buddhimaan 🧠. Aside from creating my business venture, I developed a popular mobile app called Diabetes Doctor to help find pre-diabetic symptoms among patients.

Never did I think that helping solve a social issue would bring me professional gain, but I am immensely grateful for the support I get. If you put in the hard work, you will gain professional satisfaction! 😌

How it all started! ✨

When I was in Class 7, my friends and I often used to forget our school homework, and most of us were too lazy to note down the homework in the school diary as well! At that time, many of my friend’s parents didn’t allow them to use WhatsApp. This was why I decided to develop an app, just for my class where we could all chat easily.

But the question arose — how do I make one? 🤔

My dad took me to a few local coaching institutes, but most of them kindly suggested by saying I should learn Microsoft PowerPoint and more age-appropriate software and not something as complex as Java. Later, I looked up on the internet and to my surprise, I found videos with every single step explained in detail on how to develop an app. I learnt to develop apps, on my own! 📲

That was a *self proud moment* for me to create something from scratch as I was someone who always would use the phone just to play Subway Surfers!

The idea behind ‘Gujju Student’

In Class 9, I got selected at the Ashoka Youth Ventures, where I used to go for workshops outside my state every other month. Because of this, I wasn’t able to attend my regular curriculum classes. 🏫

I thought that if I was able to learn how to programme online then what was the big deal with finding Grade 9 videos regarding subjects and classes I missed? But to my utmost shock, I wasn’t able to find a decent video for my syllabus in my native language, Gujarati. I decided to solve the major issue of a language barrier that is faced by millions and millions of students in India who study in schools with a State Board curriculum. That is how the idea of Gujju Student was born.

Initially, I started the app Gujju Student with textbooks and some notes. Now, it has been updated with videos, customised tests 📑and many other features. It has completed 2 years recently and has over 100,000 downloads! I couldn’t be proud of this achievement! 🥺

Balancing Studies with Entrepreneurship ⚖️

Being a fulltime student while working as an entrepreneur can be tedious and most times stressful. But if you love what you do, then sometimes even the late nights are worth it!

Currently, I am preparing for my undergrad engineering entrance exams. I face issues in balancing both the options with equal priority. I don’t have a team as of now, hence managing my be ventures is tough for me sometimes. When you are running a venture, that needs your involvement every day then it’s going to be difficult to find that balance , but what I believe is — if you want to change things and work on a real social problems that help solves real-life issues — then, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes.

Please do. The world needs more changemakers! So step up!

The Road Ahead

I realised, beyond Gujarat, millions of students across the country as diverse as India who study in their native language, lack quality learning content. Buddhimaan now is a centralised platform to provide learning content of 8 Indian languages for every student across the nation. Apart from this, we at Buddhimaan are working to design affordable VR headsets that can be used to by schools across India.

“I firmly believe, vernacular is the future of learning.”

I have complete faith that every student across the country, will be able to learn and understand their concepts, in a language they’re comfortable with, at their home using a phone.

I hope you’ll try to solve social issues in your community, even if you don’t have a team or funding. You just have to start! Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Thanks, FamPay for sharing my story! If you loved reading this post, stay tuned to us for more such reads on learning, building and collaborating. It’s exciting to be a part of FamPay community. Join me at friends.fampay.in!

Hitarth Sheth: Surat, India
hitarth2010@gmail.com