A class XII student of Noida-based Pathways World School, Evan Luthra (18) is a ‘computer scientist’ in his own right and make. Over the past four years, he has developed over 30 apps including StudySocia, Awenest, El Design, Geek Platter, Digital Strategist, etc, for mobile phones and other companies such as Google India, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows mobile etc. And beyond being a technophile, blogger and innovator, Evan is also a precocious serial entrepreneur having promoted several start-ups under the name and style of the Evan Luthra Group, managed by a handful of employees and six friends. Moreover, he has become a popular conference and seminar circuit speaker invited by education institutions, TED and Google conferences in India.
After finishing Plus Two this summer, Evan plans to sign up with a US university and major in software development, to transform his ideas into useful businesses to hopefully “make this world a better place to live in’’.
Evan began his cyber journey in 2008 when he was a 13-year-old student of the Lotus Valley International School where he completed secondary school in 2011. The same year his father, Satinder Singh, a fashion designer-cum-garment exporter, had launched a call centre business hosting 200 computers and accessories which subsequently failed to take off and had to be shut down. “My father had bought a large number of computers which he couldn’t sell. So, I started tinkering with them and took more than a dozen of them apart to study their structure, composition and applications,” recalls Evan.
With active support and encouragement from his parents, even if not his teachers who disapproved of his attendance record, he switched to Pathways World School in 2011 because of the excellent economics and computer science curriculum that the IB (International Baccalaureate) programme offers. In Pathways, a blog he began and subsequently linked to his apps quickly recorded 5 lakh page hits and downloads. That’s when he caught the attention of biggies like Google in 2012, who invited him to speak at a conference in Delhi. Though Evan has a great business model, his father feels his plans can wait till he completes his higher secondary and university education.
“My mobile phone app StudySocial. Inc is for students who spend hours on social networking sites. It encourages collaborative learning with chat options while Awenest facilitates dissemination of information about corruption and the corrupt. People can post information reports anonymously. These are read by thousands of people including officials and media, who in turn can investigate them,’’ says Evan.
Way to go, Bro!
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
