B.S. Mechanical Engineering with a CS minor at Purdue, from Dubai. An interactive ASCII portrait of him as a kid, asleep, hands clasped under his face. Each region of the picture opens a part of his life.
growing up
dubai — The quiet kid who had opinions about everything and sat on them.
I grew up in Dubai, in an Indian family, at a British school. I was the quiet kid with opinions about everything, and I sat on all of them.
Cycling is where I stopped sitting still. I started at 10 km and worked up to 60 km alone. When I got lost I looked for the Burj Khalifa on the horizon and found my way home from there.
In ninth grade I went to Expo 2020 fifty or sixty times. Not for the exhibits. I went to talk to the people at the country pavilions.
When I got lost I found the Burj Khalifa on the horizon and navigated home from there.
the 58 in math — I stopped waiting to be fixed and just stayed in the room with it.
I got a 58 in math. A friend sat next to me on the bus home, half consoling me.
I had cycled through every mentor and nothing clicked. I stopped waiting to be fixed and stayed in the room with the problem.
By year end I scored 100 out of 100. I finished top 5 worldwide on my ICSE boards at 98.8 percent, first globally in Mathematics, Chemistry, English Literature, History and Computer Applications. No tutors.
I stopped waiting to be fixed and just stayed in the room with it.
the pulley — She said there was only one way. There wasn't.
A physics teacher said there was only one way to solve a pulley problem. I disagreed. I grabbed my ID card, used the lanyard as a rope and objects on the desk as weights, and rebuilt the system in front of the class. She stopped and said I was right.
I spent the next year building the Quantum Quorum, the UAE's first student STEM symposium. A 30 person team, 100 plus students, 60 percent of whom had never joined an external event before. Afterward a student told me it was the first time he felt free to say what he actually thought.
It was the first time he felt free to say what he actually thought.
- X.007 Squash (2026) — Eighteen years on the court since age seven in Dubai, a Purdue traveling-team run to nationals, and where I learned to lose without quitting.
- X.001 The Burj on the horizon (2022) — Sixty kilometers alone, with no plan for getting back.
- X.003 Fifty-five visits (2022) — Fifty-five trips to a world's fair, mostly to talk to strangers from every country on earth.
- X.005 Tender Hearts Arena (2023) — Teaching art and Punjabi to children with special needs, and counting push-ups to teach numbers.
- X.006 Quantum Quorum (2023) — The UAE's first student STEM symposium, built so the quiet kids finally had a room to talk in.
- X.008 TEDxYouth Dubai (2023) — Core organizing committee for TEDxYouth Dubai, where I learned what a live event does to a plan.
- X.004 Seventy events, ten thousand players (2024) — Running competitive esports across the MENA region, live, with a fifty-person crew, in high school.
building
the corner store — My neighbour wanted to walk to the corner store alone.
Mr Gopal had lost most of his vision. One day he mentioned he wanted to walk to the corner store alone again. That was the whole brief.
I pulled apart toy cars for parts. An ultrasonic sensor and an IR sensor for obstacles. A gyroscope from a cracked phone, read by an Arduino. A vibration motor for haptic feedback, where obstacle distance maps to buzz intensity. I cased it in recycled carbon fiber and hemp resin to cut weight.
Four prototypes. I tested them blindfolded through cluttered hallways. No competition, no prize, one person.
the year i lost — I walked in sure I would place. I was not called once.
I poured months into a startup called Project Prism. A judge told me we were trying to solve everything for everyone. I stopped, and picked one problem.
I ran 300 user interviews before writing real code. I rebuilt the matching algorithm, added a dynamic pricing model, and closed paid pilots within two weeks of launch.
It reached 700 plus students and 400 plus alumni across 15 schools, 60 percent program completion, AED 15k revenue, a legal license, a 750 dollar US accelerator scholarship, and a slot to pitch at GITEX. A year after losing, I was invited back to judge.
A year after losing, I was invited back to judge.
the night before prize day — Five tons sat unsorted at the gate the night before prize day.
The recycling drive collected 7 tons in 10 days. Leaderboards and morning shoutouts did most of the work. Then, the night before prize day, 5 tons sat unsorted at the gate.
I called 10 volunteers and 7 NGOs. I built a real-time zone system on my phone. Weight tags, color codes, box IDs in a Google Sheet, WhatsApp templates for drivers. We sealed 110 boxes by afternoon.
Later I turned that night into an AI agent that walks anyone through setting up a recycling drive of their own.
I built a real-time zone system on my phone.
purdue & hackathons
the track i had no business entering — My team dropped out fifteen hours in. I kept going alone.
I signed up at HackIllinois with little coding background. My team dropped out fifteen hours into a 36 hour hackathon. About 21 hours left, just me.
Candid came out of those last hours: 50 Playwright browser agents stress-testing real websites in parallel on Modal, each a different user, with a scored conversion report at the end. A smart click routine with twelve fallback strategies kept the scores honest.
Honorable mention out of 1000 plus. I brought the same idea to the JHMC ideathon a week later, priced it at 19 dollars a test or 99 a month, and won 1000 dollars.
Read the docs, hit an error, formed a hypothesis, changed one thing, ran it again. That was the whole method.
chyme — A neck band that listens for a swallow going wrong.
ChYme came together in 36 hours at StarkHacks, for Parkinson patients with dysphagia. It affects about 80 percent of late-stage patients, and aspiration kills quietly.
I led the embedded hardware. A power circuit from scratch with a TP4056 charger and an MT3608 boost, on a board that fits a silicone neck band. Dual MPU-6050 accelerometers at the throat and sternum, STM32 firmware, and a CNN trained on Edge Impulse hitting 93 percent on-device on an Arduino Uno Q.
We took Most Creative. Then researchers working on the same problem reached out.
polymer — I shipped the feature first. Kalshi shipped it commercially.
At NexHacks at CMU I built Polymer: conditional execution for prediction markets. Traders could say if market A resolves true then execute B.
Next.js, the Polymarket API, sub 50ms condition detection, and a LiveKit voice agent to stress-test your own assumptions before you commit. Top 5 out of 1500 plus.
A weekend hack with no team, and it had the thing the market itself was still missing.
Weeks later Kalshi shipped the same feature commercially. Polymarket still has not.
in his own words
five things — Five things I carry, and what each one is for.
A kaleidoscope, because there is always more than one way to look at a thing. Every twist rearranges the same pieces into something new, which is mostly how I end up solving problems too.
A ducky tie, because however serious the room, there should always be a bit of me that keeps the humor and does not forget who I am inside it. I have worn it into rooms I had no business walking into calmly.
Oreos, because they keep me joined to my childhood. I have had almost one a day for eighteen years. I split each one into three across my meals and save the cream for last.
A box of matchsticks, because when I am stressed I light one and watch a small violent spark catch, and something lights inside me too. Just enough to get back to the task and walk past the anxiety a hard problem brings.
My glasses, because they help me see far past the temptations that led me to needing them in the first place.
There is always more than one way to look at a thing.
the room — A note to whoever rooms with me next, so the chaos makes sense.
You might walk into my room and think it is a crime scene. Walls covered with bills, polaroids, sticks, toys, and food wrappers. It is not evidence of a heist. It is my way of holding onto every ridiculous, meaningful memory, no matter how small.
On another wall you will find hundreds of pens, pencils, and ink cartridges, all date-marked and stuck with precision. Strange, maybe. For me it is how I see my progress. Every tool tells a story worth keeping. Some days the room is creative chaos, scribbled sketches and the faint smell of 3D printed plastic. When the storm passes I become a neat freak and obsess over every misplaced pen.
You might also find a giant axe, a rubber chicken, or a three foot box of Pringles. They were hilarious in the moment and earned their spot. Do not be alarmed if I ring the doorbell thirty times, or drink seven cups of water mid sprint to cure hiccups. And if you hear my spoon clinking on a plate, my grandmother believed the last bite held all the power, and I am determined to honour her.
the toaster — A broken toaster taught me to wait for the third joke.
I once sat behind a folding table with a crooked sign that read E-Waste Drive and a heart full of optimism. For hours nothing happened. The sun dipped lower and my hope began to dim. Then a man approached, not with a laptop or a phone, but a broken toaster. Does this count, he asked. It did. By the end of the day my table overflowed with mismatched electronics.
That same lesson followed me the night before Teachers Day, when I was asked to host a comedy game show. Speaking on stage felt as foreign to me as the jokes I would have to deliver. My first joke landed in a silence so heavy it felt like the auditorium walls were closing in. My second came out shakier. Then the third joke hit, and the laughter rolled in like a wave. By the time I stepped off stage I knew the silence was only ever two jokes long.
He brought a broken toaster and asked, does this count. It did.