HYDERABAD: A 15-year-old prodigy from the city is making us proud again. Hemesh Chadalavada, a recipient of the Pradhan Mantri Award (2021), is one among a handful of children selected for the Cartoon Network Redraw India campaign. The innovator and entrepreneur, who is building gadgets and software that help solve real-world problems, speaks to CE about his ideas, future and more.
Hemesh, the mastermind behind a wristband for the elderly, seatbelt and accident notifier and many such solutions, says though he’s a programmer and innovator, he’d rather be called a ‘maker’. He, whose journey began with making simple videos on day-to-day living for YouTube, slowly began exploring the gigantic world of the internet that got me intrigued. He started experimenting further with different technologies and entered the world of coding.
“The creation of videos and posting them on YouTube helped me understand and evaluate the overall content creation landscape in India. Being heavily interested in doing something for the YouTube community and helping boost quality content led to the launch of CreatoWise, a platform for content creators to optimise their content and grow their audience on YouTube. Having worked on multiple smart projects in the past, I realised the importance of quality content and its ability to make an impact on a larger level. Therefore, after intensive research and multiple trials and errors, I launched the app with the help of an AI technology called GPT 3, owned by openai.com. We are also training AI models to help YouTube creators to reach out to more people and grow their audiences,” says the visionary.
On being featured in the Redraw India initiative by Cartoon Network, the lover of cartoons says, “When Cartoon Network approached me for their Redraw India initiative, I was super thrilled. It’s such a great initiative as it encourages kids like me to be creative and think out of the box. I am glad and thankful to be a part of this initiative. Hemesh wants to deeply explore the field of software networking and coding in the coming years. “I started coding at a very young age, and it defines my career. I’m fascinated by the capabilities of software programming and how it can transform the entire algorithm just by changing a few lines of code. Having said that, I also am interested in robotics and hardware technology and will work on these soon and build something in that domain,” he tells CE.
Innovation is never easy, and a for a teenager, it comes with greater challenges, and Hemesh’s story is no exception. “While starting young has a lot of perks, it also comes with its own set of challenges. One of the biggest challenges I faced was sourcing the hardware components for my projects. In the beginning, I used to source the hardware from local shops or online websites, which were sub-standard. Soon after, my parents helped me in buying the hardware from the right places.
Another crucial challenge that I faced was getting constructive feedback from industry leaders but my school has been very gracious in helping me address this by connecting me with industry experts who later mentored me and guided me in fine-tuning the final product,” he shares. Hemesh calls himself a proud student of the internet and a self-taught programmer. “We modern kids are privileged to have access to the internet which allows us to gain so much knowledge just through a couple of clicks,” he signs off.