An Incredible Story Of IIT Student's Home Cook To Become Programmer

When this 13-year-old boy escaped from his home in Manpur, a picturesque village in Uttarakhand, he only knew one place. Mumbai, a center of opportunity, a city that never sleeps, a city that has something to offer. He went to the largest city in search of a better life.

With little education to support, Akash Nautiyal had no choice but to do small jobs. He did everything from door-to-door marketing for cigarette companies to playing guitar at local entertainment venues. The little money he could make from it was enough to fill his stomach, but not the desire to learn and grow more in life.

In 2014, he started working in a call center and felt a bit relaxed in his life, but there was a tragedy and he was robbed. All of his property, which he bought for a time, disappeared in an instant. He lost all the savings saved in cash, books, and even a laptop. He couldn't pay the rent and his landlord fired him. Now there was no way he could get back to work with him at the call center. Fate brought him down again and he had to start working as a chef in an apartment with several young men.

He did not know that this was the beginning of a journey that would give him a whole new approach to life. His employers were students at IIT-Bombay, who were chained to laptops. One day, the curious Akash asked what they were doing on the laptop. "You who use Facebook, WhatsApp exactly? There is coding on these websites, these apps. Computer science needs to be learned. Co-founder Housing.com replied Snehil Baksi: We let this be done."

This pleased him and he began to learn the basics of bookmarking and programming. With the initial support of employers and then training in online courses, Akash quickly gained momentum, and over the next 15 months, he spent most of his time working with his new programming writing skills.
 
He cooked in the morning, cleaned the house, slept for a few hours a day, and when his employers returned from the office, he handed over their computers, which played with numbers. During the year of targeted training, he could handle front-end processing, servers, and databases.

Akash earns Rs 8-10,000 as a chef, but with his programming skills, he now earns around Rs 70,000 a month and works as an iOS developer at a startup in Mumbai. Akash is a source of inspiration for many vulnerable children who want to improve their lives.