Shravan Kumaran is 13 and his brother Sanjay is only 11. But that is not stopping them from thinking and doing big. The two Chennai boys have formed a company to develop software applications (apps) for smartphones that has already seen 60,000 downloads since it was formed in December 2011.
“We want to have 50% of the world’s smartphones to have our apps, and want to take our company public,” Shravan declared boldly at India’s first conference organised by respected American tech website TechCrunch, that brings software programmers, entrepreneurs and financiers together.
HT had first reported about the Kumar brothers in July 2012.
Also at TechCrunch Bangalore were Raghav Sarin, 16, from New Delhi’s Sanskriti School, who teamed up at random with 15-year-old Rahul Dominic from Bangalore’s National Public School to overnight develop an app that could help people locate travelling companions whose interests would match theirs when they are headed alone for a destination – based on information shared by people on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
These schoolboys could be the potential Sachin Tendulkars of India’s technology industry, in which confident youngsters are making bold new moves. While Sarin does web design out of school hours, Dominic has developed training apps for companies. Dominic says he enrolled for a course in NIIT after helping his father in software work. He now has his own app label, called Cosmicsoft.
{{/usCountry}}These schoolboys could be the potential Sachin Tendulkars of India’s technology industry, in which confident youngsters are making bold new moves. While Sarin does web design out of school hours, Dominic has developed training apps for companies. Dominic says he enrolled for a course in NIIT after helping his father in software work. He now has his own app label, called Cosmicsoft.
{{/usCountry}}Shravan and Sanjay, studying at Vaels Billabong School, got a headstart in computers from their father Kumaran Narendran, a senior executive at anti-virus software maker Symantec. He taught them some programming, and they added their own learning and aptitude.
“I am the the technologist and he is the smart guy. He is the CEO and I am the president,” said Shravan. “We will soon develop apps for others and employ people,” Sanjay chipped in.
Their coolest app so far is a car racing game in which an iPhone can be used to move images on a computer screen – like it was a joystick.
They have developed seven iPhone and three Android platform apps so far covering education and lifestyle in addition to gaming, and earned a modest $600 (`40,000) from advertisements, but their dreams are big with Go Dimensions .
“Other kids play games. We create games,” Shravan declared.