Young, Bright, and Making it Right

Remarkable stories of children and teens making the world a better place, one astonishing act at a time

- Claire Sibonney

Lighting the Way

UDAY BHATIA, AGE 18

TECHNOLOGY WAS ALWAYS FASCINATING to Uday Bhatia, even as a child. He first discovered his passion for tech when he was gifted a drone in the fourth-grade which sparked his curiosity about how machines worked. He soon began learning computer science and created his first video game on Roblox at 14.

But Uday’s head was never just buried in circuits and codes: He was also deeply conscious of the needs of others. During the pandemic, for instance, he developed a successful e-tutoring platform called FindOurTutor to provide learning assistance to students. “I’ve always liked the idea of building something from the ground up and using technology to make things that solve real-world problems,” he says.

Later, while part of a mentorship programme, Uday, then 16, visited Bichpuri village in UP, where he discovered an alarming issue the villagers faced—six- to eight-hour-long power outages. “When I learnt that children were using flashlights and kerosene lamps to study, I wanted to come up with a solution.”

As he investigated the problem, Uday discovered that this was far from an isolated case. While most of India’s villages have been electrified, reliable supply remains a persistent problem. Many states, such as Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, face regular power outages that could last up to 10 to 12 hours a day.

Determined to find a fix, Uday spent the next six months learning from YouTube tutorials, collecting second-hand components and experimenting in his terrace workshop in order to a devise a low-cost, backup-based lightbulb that would offer uninterrupted illumination when regular power supply falters.