IIT Kanpur Alumni Make it to Elite List of Forbes ‘30 under 30’

Here is a good news for IIT Kanpur to be proud of its three alumni as these students have made it to the prestigious Forbes list of ‘30 under 30’ for the year 2017 for developing a unique social networking application called Sharechat which simplifies access to digital content for non-English speakers.

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Three alumni from IIT-K who entered to Elite List of Forbes ‘30 under 30’ are -

• Farid Ahsan, 24 from Lucknow
• Ankush Sachdeva, 23 from Ghaziabad
• Bhanu Pratap Singh, 25 from Gorakhpur

The names of the three IIT-K alumni figured under mobile tech, social media, and communication category. Reacting to the development, Farid Ahsan said that they feel great to be placed on the Forbes list and was happy that finally the utility of Sharechat is being acknowledged.

Starling facts about Sharechat -

• It boasts of 5 million downloads
• 1.7 million shares on Google Play
• User base is growing at the rate 30% per month
• It was launched in 2015
• Its target was to cover regional language consumers in India
• It is available in 8 Indian languages

All the three graduates from IIT-K, instead of going for the conventional high paying jobs, chose to try their luck in entrepreneurship and explore their passion. Bhanu Pratap Singh said that their love for technology and products led them to build a series of internet products. Initially, they faced a lot of problems, failure and rejection. But they never gave up their mission and finally, success came their way in the form of Sharechat.

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Ankush said the audience seeks local language content and they want to interact with other users of similar backgrounds in their own native language only. The app is gaining tremendous popularity as well.