Gates was a computer whizzkid. So is Vivek. Gates started a garage startup, now known as Microsoft when he was 20. Vivek, 18, has started a venture Oxitech which threatens to make waves in the software ocean soon.
The comparison stops there. Gates came from a comfortable American middle class home with a rich lawyer father who could afford to allow young Gates to indulge in his passion for computing.
Vivek’s father owns a small eatery, and the boy could afford to buy his own computer just two years ago. Gates came from a big city, Seattle. Vivek is from the backward town of Bidar.
His is in an inspiring saga, of an ordinary person rising above his humble origins.
Besides being constrained by poverty and educated in Kannada medium and being from a rural background, with a rudimentary knowledge of English, Vivek has considerably mastered the art of web designing.
At nine, like any other kid, Vivek loved playing computer games. That hobby got Vivek hooked on to computers. He got more and more intrigued by the machine and the curiosity got the better of him.
Unable to even purchase a computer of his own, nor able to afford books and study material to master the subject, for him cyber cafes were his school and laboratory. Enrolling his name in a computer institute was unthinkable.
He chose web-designing as his area of interest. For five painful years he learnt the basics such as HTML and Java. A disciplined young man, he mastered his chosen calling the hard way, digging up knowledge through books and surfing the search engines.
“I used to google-search and apply my findings, all this - in an internet cafe,” says Vivek. At 15, he was a freelance web designer. His hard work landed him his first web designing project for an education institution. He successfully completed his project in a stretch of five-days, toiling away in a cyber cafe. That got him Rs 8,000, his first earning.
There was no turning back after that. He conceived his brainchild - Oxitech in 2008, and now caters to 35 clients.
First operating system
Having learnt from his experiences, Vivek wants to make things easy for those who cannot afford to own a computer. The hardships he faced during his first assignment inspired him to launch his ambitious online operating system. The system will be operational within a month’s time and according to him, is the first in its kind in the country.
“Users can type www.oxios.net in the URL and log into the system where they can store and manage online an entire database like a movie folder, music folder, wordpad or a power point presentation, with a specific account provided by our company. It enables people without computers to save files in a cyber cafe,” says Vivek.
“When I used to work in a cyber cafe, every time I would save some important file or script regarding my project, the cyber cafe owner would delete them. This is the reason why I am so attached to this project,” he says.
DH News Service