Life

Aryan smiling with a thumbs up at a cafe

I like to begin this story in Class 10. I scored 96.4% in my CBSE boards, and for the first time it felt like I had a real say in what came next. I picked science, PCM with Computer Science, because I wanted to become an engineer, just like my mama and mausi.

I come from a family in the gold business. My father wanted me to get a good education. He isn't with us anymore, but his dream that I build something on my own is something I still carry. Engineering was my choice, so I prepared for JEE alongside my 12th boards, qualified JEE Main, scored 91.6% in boards, sat for the entrance exams of many universities, and finally got selected for Computer Science at

Manipal University Jaipur.

Aryan in front of Hawa Mahal, Jaipur — Hawa Mahal, Jaipur

Jaipur is a beautiful city, and it quickly became home. I started engineering with a MacBook and a very basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and Python. Around me, hackathons were happening everywhere, and I remember literally searching YouTube for “what is a hackathon, and what do you do in it?”, and still being confused about how anyone builds a whole project on a problem statement in so little time.

So I started exploring. I sat in on tech summits and went to Google DevFest, and slowly things started making sense. I created my GitHub account and figured out how it all works. Then I joined the AI² lab, and that is where I met a senior whose part in my story was short, but it changed its direction. He showed me the path into machine learning, deep learning and generative AI, and gave me the push I needed to start. Because of him, in first year itself I got an R&D ML internship at Elumina.

My first college project was Unipool, a cab-sharing platform for our university that my classmates loved, and the first time I used Lovable & Bolt, the AI website builders everyone was talking about in 2024. Then came the competitions: a consultathon, 1st runner-up; BrandIt, 1st runner-up again; and then UniWay, where the challenge was to build a navigation platform for the university. There, I found my way to first place, quite literally, through UniWay.

Two laptops at the Solana India Tour workshop at MUJ — Solana India Tour, MUJ

The cash prizes were small, but they motivated me more than I can explain. I also won several

Solana bounties, and with my own money I bought a quite expensive pair of Nike shoes for the first time. It felt like a big achievement, because it was mine.

IIT Madras, Road Safety Hackathon 1 — IIT Madras, Road Safety Hackathon

IIT Madras, Road Safety Hackathon 2 — IIT Madras, Road Safety Hackathon

Second year opened things up. I got to work with Southern Federal University, Russia, as part of an International Interdisciplinary Student Project. The university recognised me with awards for student excellence and a place on the Dean's List, and I went to IIT Madras as a finalist in the National Road Safety Hackathon.

Alongside all of it, I kept applying for remote internships and gave so many interviews. At the end of second year, I joined Sylus AI as a full stack developer, built an AI platform there from scratch, and was promoted to team lead and AI engineer. In third year, my team was shortlisted for the CPP program at HPE, where we're researching drive failure, and I got shortlisted for the Amazon ML Summer School. This winter, I'll be back at Sylus AI as AI Product Lead.

And I build my own products. Lattice makes text sound natural and has reached 400+ users across 52 countries; Petal is the newest one. I'm most active on , sharing what I build as I go. From a Class 10 result sheet to shipping things people use, the story is still being written.

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