The pandemic did not bring only devastation and adversity but also had a few silver linings. One of them was online schooling which changed the entire perspective of students and resulted in many ways of learning new skills. The story of 12-year-old Venkatesh Dempo is one such story of a life-changing opportunity brought on by the paradigm shift of these past two years.
The pandemic period of online learning gave him the opportunity to learn to code. He participated in a national level ‘Google Code To Learn Contest’ and built an app related to the tourism industry of Goa during the competition.
Venkatesh, a student of 7th Standard in Sharda Mandir School, loves coding and building robots. “Besides this, I also love to sing and play the guitar,” said Venkatesh recalling that he became familiar with coding 3 years back when his friend’s father invited him to be a part of a coding workshop. “There I learned the basics of Robotics and Coding and developed a lot of interest in coding and I kept going for it after that I participated as a team in different competitions related to coding but the lockdown changed the entire scenario and things changed drastically.”
Venkatesh had developed a liking for coding right from a young age but what made him get closer to it was the lockdown. During the lockdowns and after as well, there were no physical classes and it gave him a lot of time to work on the coding. “I had a lot of time during the lockdown as the classes went online and there were many companies offering online courses in Coding, I decided to join the online coding course offered by a Mumbai-based company called RFL (Robo Fun Lab) and that knowledge helped me a lot to built this app,” said Venkatesh.
The app developed by Venkatesh is about Tourism in Goa called ‘Tourism de Goa’. “In this app we feature the most recommended places to visit in Goa, and also if the tourists want to read the newspaper of magazines of Goa, we have featured a bunch of publications of Goa on our app since i want to promote the Goan businesses on this platform,” said Venkatesh adding there is a lot of information available on the app about Goa. “I have included some recommended places such as beaches, museums, temples, and holy pilgrimages like mosques and churches. The app also has some sub-features like hotels, emergency numbers, petrol stations etc. In Goa, each city has one of two petroleum stations and I have given the directions for the same in our app.”
Now social media has become a major traffic driving force and one cannot do without having the presence, followers and information made available on all the social media platforms, hence looking at this Venkatesh also built reasonable social media followings on all the major platforms. “I have the social media handles on Instagram, Twitter and Youtube on which we promote the Goan businesses,” he said, adding he promotes the upcoming events and new businesses on this platform. “We first shoot the videos of the ambience and places and then edit them before posting on all the social media channels.”
According to Venkatesh, presently he does not have any team and he himself takes care of the social media post creation and posting. “My mother takes me to the places and I do the shoot myself,” he said adding that later on he also takes care of the editing part. “Sometimes when I have a lot of editing work, I sit till late at night to finish my editing job. Even during the time of app development, I submitted my app just a couple of minutes before the submission time of 12am.”
Just like any other kid his age, Venkatesh also wants to play and spend his time with his friends but when it comes to coding, he seems to like it more than anything else. “I love to play sports and get along with friends on the grounds but I love coding more than anything else hence I give more preference to the coding and less to playtime,” he said.
According to Venkatesh, he loves discovering new things. “I make use of the information channels such as Youtube to learn how to code and I made use of the books and available information to gather the database of the places and things showcased in the app. It took me almost six months to gather all the information and document it in the app,” said Venkatesh.
Now the next stage according to Venkatesh is getting the app on the play store and promoting it through social media. “The app has already been sent to Google for approval and once that is done it will be available on the play store but on iOS it might take some more time since I am still figuring out how to make it compatible with the Mac platform,” said Venkatesh.
Venkatesh has used the MIT app which is an open-source platform for developing the app. “I use the MIT app inventor for coding, it is a blog-based platform and for editing the videos I make use of Canva and Wondershare and the App is currently hosted on the MIT App Inventor,” he said.
According to Venkatesh, the Robo fun lab where he learned coding during the lockdown has only given him basic knowledge of coding while the rest of the information he acquired himself. When asked what his plans are when he grows up, Venkatesh said that he wants to become an IIT Engineer. “I want to do my Engineering through IIT (Indian Institute of Technology, and later on I want to open my own business of Robotics Academy,” he said adding that he has already created a YouTube channel called ‘Dempo Robotics Academy of Goa’ (DRAG) and there he talks about the coding. “I give coding tutorials on this video channel,” said Venkatesh adding that he was planning the summer camp but he is not getting time as he is constantly working on the app development. “The App is still not available on the google play store, after appearing at the science festival everyone has become curious about it and they are eagerly waiting for the app to appear on the Google Play store,” he added.
Venkatesh is an unusually gifted kid and he has the potential to excel in this and do more, he and other kids like him need the right platform available here in Goa itself so that their talents can be nurtured at a very initial stage. The app is just the beginning of a new journey for Venkatesh and he will do many such things as he grows. Incredible Goa provides a platform to all such bright young minds who work towards bringing change in society, and we also recommend that you download his app ‘Tourism de Goa’ from the Play Store and give him encouragement to do more in the future. You can also reach out to us to share your honest views on this inspiring story of Venkatesh Dempo.
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