Abstract - I applied for Venkat Panchapakesan Memorial Scholarship in 2019. I was not selected for the scholarship but was contacted by the Talent & Outreach Programs specialist of Google.
(A)I'm one of the co-founders of a start-up which aims to bring a positive change in the lives of people. The city in which I live has a shortage of cooks. There are cooks who want work but due to lack of a system, cooks and the customers largely depend on the word of mouth to find each other. We are addressing this problem by making an app. While working on this we found that a large number of cooks are female who come from socially backward background, are not well educated and have no idea about the resources available to them. We also came to know that a large number of female cook's still use cloth or some other thing during their periods which not only contributes to pollution of various types because of getting thrown anywhere but also is very hazardous for the health of the women's. We are in the process of partnering with NGO's who work for women's health to provide female cooks with sanitary napkins free of cost. The second thing we are doing at our current level is to give people a proper way to get there garbage processed. Through our cooks we have access to all the garbage produced. We have partnered with a local start-up who works in this field and by this way garbage gets recycled instead of contributing to pollution.
(B)Extra money always helps when you are trying to run a startup. Moreover, through our startup we would like to make all the cooks literate about technology. We will train them to how to use our app and the internet which will help them in various fields of life, as everything is going digital these days. The kids of the cooks don't get the chance to go to good schools because of which they don't get exposed to coding and computer science in general. Being a computer science student ourselves, we know how important it is to have knowledge about computers. We will work to shorten this gap by regularly conducting workshops, seminars and meet-ups in their community to increase the awareness about computers and technology and also to increase the interest of students for computer science.
2.
What adversity have you faced, and how did it impact your career? Please exemplify the steps you took to overcome it.
My answer :
I come from a conservative family where children are not given the freedom to make their choices. Parents make them for us and it happened with me too. After I completed my high school my parents asked me to join a local college to pursue BSc. I thought to give it a try and took BSc with computer science. After attending college for few months I realized that this college doesn't offer what I need both in the quality of education and the opportunities it offers but I couldn't get myself to talk to my parents. It became a burden for me to go to college. I envisioned college as a place where I will be taught to study to bring a change, to study to work for something greater than myself but all I was learning was how to get placement in companies, and how life will become easy after getting a job. Nobody was talking about start-ups and entrepreneurship. So, one day I decided to talk to my parents about changing the college. I thought that whether I gather the courage to talk to my parents and live the life I want or suffer for the rest of my life. I told my parents about my plans. They were sceptical about my plans and also worried about what others will say as I was dropping out of college when my first year was about to be completed. I convinced my parents, dropped out of college and started preparing for engineering entrance exams. Gave the exam next year, got a good rank and took admission in computer science engineering branch in my current college. So, basically I'm a college drop out who is again in the college.
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