Seher Taneja: The teen innovator on a mission to revolutionise healthcare

rmined to fight for their kids instead. In some cases, these struggles even resulted in a miracle cure. That was how the idea for the Yash Gandhi Foundation first came about. "With the clock against us, we knew that any work we did was unlikely to benefit Yash, but to us, it didn't matter," Ash and Sonal Gandhi write, on the Yash Gandhi Foundation website. "What was most important was that we could make a difference and prevent another family from going through what we were at the time."  

[caption id="attachment_25140" align="aligncenter" width="1620"] The founders of the Yash Gandhi Foundation, Kavi Gandhi with his family. Photo: Twitter[/caption]

Handing over the reins

Today, the Foundation is run by their second son, Kavi Gandhi, now a student at Davidson College. In three years, they raised $460,000 to aid I-Cell research, to prevent the disease that claimed his brother's life from taking another. I-cell disease is caused by a genetic mutation and is a rare, inherited metabolic disorder "characterised by coarse facial features, skeletal abnormalities and mental retardation," according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders. Children with I-cell disease show delayed development of gross and fine motor skills, hearing loss, lack of muscle tone and growth delays.  

The Gandhis ran their foundation, the only one in the world for I-Cell, for 15 years. In 2013, they even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for their cause. Three years later, however, they believed the time had come to close the foundation. Their 13-year-old son, Kavi, was not happy to hear the news. After giving it a few days of thought, he announced to his parents that he was going to revive the foundation and run it himself, in memory of his brother. 

Growing up with Yash

Only two years younger than Yash Gandhi, the family's trauma impacted Kavi too. He recalls a slew of hospital trips, and watching his brother hooked up to oxygen tanks and walkers. "We were really close like a lot of siblings are at that age," Kavi said. "A lot of my memories are from playing with him and spending time together. Those six years, I've definitely cherished and still retained a lot of those memories."  

When Yash passed away in 2009, the family created the Yash Gandhi Foundation. "Losing my sibling was probably one of the most formative experiences for me... the foundation is a way to transform the grief I felt with my brother into really honouring his memory and preserving that," Kavi remarked.   

[caption id="attachment_25141" align="aligncenter" width="780"] Kavi Gandhi was named the 2018 Global Genes RARE Champion of Hope for Teen Advocacy[/caption]

At the frontier of I-Cell disease research

Since he took over the foundation in 2006, Kavi has worked to connect with other families who have been impacted by I-Cell and has raised nearly half a million dollars towards ML II research. In 2020, Kavi interned at the Greenwood Genetic Center to study the disease in human and zebrafish cells. The young Global Indian is a 2021 John M Belk Scholar at Davidson College, where he is doing his undergraduate degree in Public Health, with a Minor in Hispanic studies. He's also a member of the university's jazz ensemble.   

In 2018, Global Genes named Gandhi the 2018 Global Genes RARE Champion of Hope for Teen Advocacy. Every year since 2012, the Yash Gandhi Foundation has issued research grants - in 2020, a smiling Kavi, standing with his parents, announced a $130,000 grant, their largest to date, to Dr Richard Street at the Greenwood Genetic Centre and Dr Stuart Kornfield of Washington University. 

ews mark - and it's not just clickbait, either. He receives plenty of advice telling him to take the IIT route and he shuns it all. "I will definitely go to college, I want the experience, but I would like it to be MIT or Stanford," Ayush tells Global Indian in an interview. The big ticket offers come in from the MLOps companies around the world, Ayush likes to pick and choose, preferring startups to bigger firms and foreign companies to Indian ones.

[caption id="attachment_18727" align="aligncenter" width="782"] Ayush Singh[/caption]

Reborn in hardship 

He’s an unusual prodigy. Until the pandemic, he lived an affluent, suburban life with his family in Patna. When Covid-19 hit and businesses collapsed, his father was among those who took a fall, leaving the family in a very tough situation, financially. "We went from having every luxury in the world to wondering where our next meal was coming from and watching relatives and friends distance themselves," Ayush says. The situation was dire - the IIT-JEE route didn’t seem like an option.

So, Ayush got to work. He began cold emailing founders and networking on LinkedIn, trying his hand first at web and android development, both spaces crowded by enthusiastic teenagers. There was no dearth of critics telling him not to enter the tech space, that he "wouldn't even get ₹10,000 per month." Luckily, he chose not to listen. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are budding, complex spaces, requiring skills that can't be learned through a couple of crash courses or on YouTube. He did spend a lot of time on the latter "but there's so much more to learn than can be done through videos," Ayush explains. "I would read numerous books, even on a single topic, to bring myself to a professional level."

He began by learning Python, picking up a copy of Python For Geeks (Muhammad Asif), graduating to O'Reily's Robust Python and then to more advanced design patterns. He also had to learn the Math. "I did Algebra, Linear Algebra, Calculus from Khan Academy," Ayush explains. He found he had a knack for data science and machine learning - "From coding, I jumped to machine learning and deep learning." So far, he's read over 20 books on the subject.

He dedicated “24 hours a day to do this." He would wake up at 5 am and spend anywhere between 10 and 16 hours studying, apart from the five or six hours that he had to give to school. When the time came to return to campus, he would carry his books with him.

Wooing employers 

Building a profile and upping his skills was one thing but landing a job was a whole new challenge. He could impress his potential employers with his skills but predictably enough, was told that he was too young. Cold-emailing worked well and he chose startups believing they’d be open to taking a chance. That’s how he found a post by ZenML on LinkedIn. "I emailed the founder, Adam. I highlighted my skills and although I didn’t know much about MLOps at the time, I had prepared a project that aligned with the company's aim." The founder replied and Ayush was put through two sets of interviews - a coding interview and a 'take home challenge'.  He got the job and is now experienced at conducting interviews himself. What's the trick, though?

 Unleashing the entrepreneur within 

His ability to think differently, learn new skills and get companies to hire him at the age of 13 is, arguably, a great entrepreneurial talent in itself. But he has struck out on his own - aside from his full-time job, school and the freelance assignments he takes on, Ayush is also building his own startup, Antern with co-founders Tushar Vaswani and Priyanshu Bhattacharjee. He describes Antern as the ‘Netflix of Education’. "We're leveraging AI and ML for the education space," he says. Taking off from the massive success of his MIT-recommended course on Free Code Camp, the company is launching 'nano degrees', certificate courses that are in-depth versions of the free course. The company launched on June 20 and also involves an AR/VR master course.

"I started with a basic machine learning course and thought, let's do this on a large scale," Ayush says. He met his co-founder, Tushar, through the YouTube comment box. Antern harnesses an AI assistant that can assess a student’s performance every week and answer complex Codex questions.

Ayush is also building Schema, a platform that caters to content creators. More than half of content creators don't understand the analytical tools that gauge performance. Schema will retrieve data by analysing all social media platforms to provide a comprehensive report on performance and how the customers are responding. "You will also be able to segment your customers and target them specifically," he says.

[caption id="attachment_18726" align="aligncenter" width="830"] Ayush with content creator Ishan Sharma (left)[/caption]

Carving a niche 

He also prefers to work with companies abroad. "Indian companies treat you like a kid," says Ayush. "Even if they hire you, they give you repetitive tasks that they don't want to do. At ZenML, I was treated like a core member; I was even involved in the company's retreat where the founders were making decisions. They focus on your skills and give you unique tasks. Indian startups tend to focus on their growth but companies like ZenML know that their growth involves mine too."

Staying grounded 

He sees himself "building my own multi-million-dollar company" five years down the line. Entrepreneurship is the plan. His father tells him, "Your work shouldn't be just for one family. Do it for 1000 families, just like Ratan Tata." Ayush has kept his word, helping young people find good jobs.

At home, his parents are immensely proud of their talented son. They advise him to keep going, even when he fails and to remain humble. "Because I have seen rock bottom and I will never forget what that was like.”

The future of ML, AI and Deep Learning 

It's a promising area, Ayush says. "Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI will create millions of jobs all over the world. But they won't be able to find talented developers." Companies might be willing to pay handsome salaries but expect something in return. "It's not just about learning some coding," he says. "There is a paucity of talented developers. People who say they know ML know how to use an API and build an algorithm but it's important to know what works where. And when an algorithm doesn't work, how do you tweak your data to make it happen?"

He can't stress the importance of domain knowledge enough. "The jobs are there and will pay well but will remain untaken. You can't succeed in AI and ML if you don't know Maths because that's what it is, at its core. And then, you need to code. It's not enough to just use the buzzwords and think you know the subject."

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