Angad Dayani - A promising boy of just 15 years

Angad Dayani. Mumbai

I'm 16 years old now and am a Leo according to my star sign. I study at Jamnabai Narsee International School in Mumbai and am currently pursuing the final year of High School under IBDP. My life has been all about exploration right from hobbies and education to company profiles. I love using technology to empower people and change lives. Thus, I call myself a social tech entrepreneur. I've been a part of the global maker community and work towards promoting the concepts of self-education and Do It Yourself. I love learning new things and building further on what I've learned by practical experimentation.  Ever since I was young, I've loved automobile design, marine biology, robotics and zoology. Learning more in each of these through books and television shows, I developed a fascination for technology, design and sharks. This led me to watching a lot of National Geographic, Discovery Channel and the T.V show Art Attack on Disney TV which is when I began making things. Pursuing this, I took help from the engineers at my father's office to build all the small projects I wanted to build after getting introduced to Robotics through the Lego Mindstorm Kit my parents bought me when I was 8. The interest grew to such an extent that I started participating in tech competitions at IIT Bombay's Techfest under the guidance of Mr.Shailesh Sansare who taught me frugal innovation. Moving on, I started developing my skill set following online video tutorials by Make Magazine and built anything and everything I found fascinating on the internet. I studied in a state board school in Maharashtra till grade 9 when I got frustrated with the rote learning based education in school, even though I was doing well academically and under the guidance of my tutor then, Mr.Vinit Ajgaonkar, I quit formal schooling and began what is now known to be Open Schooling. This saved me the time I spent at post-school subject tuition and unnecessary assignments and projects. I quit formal schooling and not education. Whilst Open Schooling, I learned and improved on my Mathematics, Sciences, Economics, English and life skills. I appeared for my 10th grade high school exams as a private candidate through the IGCSE and NIOS boards. My tutor guided me on how I could give the 10th grade exams directly without appearing for the 9th grade exams and I followed exactly that gaining a year to do what I loved to - Making! It was during this one year that I emailed professor Ramesh Raskar from the MIT Media Lab and was lucky enough to get to be a part of the ReDx India Initiative they were running in India in the form of a research student at their Build-A-Thons. I worked on a few projects with them from July 2013 to January 2015 and it was during this period that I got to present  to Industrialist Ratan Tata (from Tata Group on  22/8/2013 in Mumbai) for India Initiative funding and also to the ex-president of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam (on 25/10/2013 in Hyderabad). I was also lucky enough to get to speak at TEDxGateway ( Asia's Largest TEDx event on 8/12/2013),TEDxHewlettPackardBangalore (Corporate TEDx at HP Bangalore on 23/7/2014) and TEDxNUS ( National University of Singapore on 21/3/2015). I stopped Open Schooling in 2014 and re-joined formal schooling on July 7, 2014. There were several reasons behind taking this decision. During my free year, I spent 70% of my day, everyday doing entrepreneurship, research, building more technology and travelling for public speaking and events. Drowned in my passion, I didn't realize that my academics were getting neglected and didn't anticipate the level to which this was harming me. Many a times, I had ideas but lacked skills or knowledge required to go ahead and build the project or to pursue the idea forward. It was no longer tech, but was engineering. Skills like Image Processing, Signal Processing, Machine Learning and Power optimization required at least an undergraduate education in Mathematics, Physics and Computer science. Moreover, making these projects into sell-able products required skills of which, I lacked many. Understanding that education was the only thing which could get my research and entrepreneurship back on track, I re-joined school. Along with this, inadequate time spent with people my age caused loneliness and confusion. Thus, going back to school has helped me gain a structured formal education along with a much better understanding of social norms and development of communication skills. Every day, I fill in a new academic gap and feel better about myself. Hence, I feel I took the right decision. Other than tech and entrepreneurship, I've played soccer for 6 years whilst I was in school and was a part of the school team for 3 of those 6 years. I also swam at district level competitions with free style being my form stroke. I played the violin when I was young and have re-started learning the instrument now. My post school-hours life is now occupied with assignments, home work and tuitions. For extra curricular activities, I participate in MUNs, go to the Gym and work on smaller projects whilst still pursuing few entrepreneurial endeavours. Running a company is a full time job. The journey to where I am now has not been easy and I do not completely credit myself for what I have achieved.None of whatever I am and have achieved could have been done without the support, encouragement and guidance of my parents. Apart from them, I've had mentors on every step in life from whom I've learned different things conceptually and about life. There's way too many people responsible for my upbringing and I'm indebted to them throughout my life. Inspirations: These are my heroes. They make me want to challenge life everyday, make me want to learn more everyday and above all, make me want to be a better person everyday. Mr.Kundandas Daryani (My Grandfather) Being a Hindu and shifting from Sindh in Pakistan to Mumbai, my grandfather spent the majority of his life in scarcity and discrimination. Post his family's refusal to educate him, he still worked extra hours to learn and complete his education whilst doing extremely well academically. He faced several other problems throughout his life but never stopped doing good for others even when they never did the same for him. His struggle, his life story and his nature makes me want to work harder and makes me want to be a better person everyday.