An alumni of Indian Institute of Information Technology-Allahabad (IIIT-A) has decided to return to the campus and share secret ‘mantras’ of success with the current crop of budding engineers.
Pratyus Patnaik would train the students into ways of becoming an innovative engineer and a successful entrepreneur. A BTech (IT) of 2003-2007 batch, Patnaik, who is in early 30s, is now regarded as a science prodigy.
Along with his three Indian friends – Jay Srinivasan, Rahul ‘RJ’ Jain and Manish Lachwani – he launched an app-testing startup based out of San Francisco in US-Appurify in April 2012. The technology developed by these engineers caught the attention of US multinational giant Google and led to startup’s acquisition by it in June 2014.
“We have requested Patnaik to visit IIIT-A campus and address current batches of students and he has agreed. We will soon work out other details of the visit,” said dean (academics) Prof GC Nandi. Incidentally, Patnaik had honed his skills under Prof Nandi as a student. “He is a perfect individual to motivate our students to turn into innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs,” he added.
After completing BTech from IIIT-A, Patnaik did his MS from Stanford University, US and is the co-founder and vice-president (engineering) of Appurify Inc.
Appurify lets developers automate testing and optimisation of their mobile apps and websites. It permits wide-scale testing on a big range of gadgets so that developers may catch bugs and other performance issues on devices they can’t test by themselves. Appurify had raised $ 6.3 million from investors, including Google Ventures, thus turning it into an example of Google investing in a company before acquiring it. Data Collective, Radar Partners, Felicis Ventures, and Foundation Capital had also invested in both Appurify’s 2012 seed round and $ 4.5 million from March 2013.
Appurify’s service can simulate a specific mobile network and even simulate what happens if the connection is weak or drops out completely. This feature makes Appurify like an open, software version of Facebook, Ericsson, and Internet.org’s physical ‘innovation lab’ for testing across weak international networks.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Allahabad / TNN / December 27th, 2014