Twenty-one-year-old Ashish Cherian is not your average college student. He’s a coding genius who’s developed for several companies, won the global fourth rank at the Codeforces competition in 2016 and even won a 100 per cent scholarship from IBM.
Ashish, who did most of his schooling in Kolkata, first developed an interest in computers when he was in Class IX. “I got my first computer and internet connection then and I was instantly hooked,” says Ashish. He started watching hacking tutorials and started a blog about it too. He even managed to hack his classmates, so it was surprising when he failed in ‘all’ his Computer Science exams in Class IX and X. With all hopes lost, his dad sent him for Java tuitions where he started learning how to code. Soon, Ashish started a computer club called dig.it in school and started participating in competitive programming.
“In my first year of college, I went for a hackathon in TCS SIPCOT, where I realised that I didn’t know anything. Everything I learnt in school about coding was not useful here. That’s when I started learning Python. I started reading books and taking online lessons,” says Ashish. Things started progressing quickly for Ashish and in his second year of college at Hindustan University, his seniors recruited him and together, they started a company called Flytta, an online platform for relocation services. So what’s one absolutely necessary skill to have when it comes to coding? Ashish believes that it’s the ability to learn, “Every time I finish learning something, something new comes up and I have to learn that all over again.” That’s how fast technology evolves!
Currently, Ashish works with veteran developer Dorai Thodla at infoassistants.com. They work on aspects such as company intelligence, technology intelligence and product intelligence. Talking about the importance of networking, Ashish says, “For me, networking means being a part of a community. I am a part of Chennai Geeks and IoT Geeks and other such communities in Chennai. We also built our own community called Build2Learn.in. It is an initiative to help people learn to programme. Our motto is ‘Build to Learn and Learn to Build’. Here, you get a chance to connect with students and professionals and build something with them.”
But how does he cope with being a student and developing for all these companies? “It all comes down to priorities,” he says and adds, “I give my work a little more priority than my studies.”