8th grader from Bangalore is already coding and aims at having her own startup one day.

When she was 10 years old, like any other kid she was immersed in mobile games and binge-watched pet/animal videos. Her parents then entered the scene and thought of identifying her passion. They wanted to properly channelize her energy towards what she loves. They bought her an Arduino experiment kit to check if it interests her. Boom! It worked. The girl started doing those experiments along with a little bit of coding. She went on to create a YouTube channel to share her knowledge. There you go, the journey of a young coder started from thereon. Let’s take a sneak peek at the journey of an enthusiastic and ambitious young girl from Bangalore, Likhitha H.

An Active And Gifted Kid:

Likhitha H was born on 29th March 2009. Her father Dr. Harish R J is a doctor and the Managing Director of RJH Healthcare while her mother Ashwini I Reddy is the director of RJH healthcare. Likhitha goes to Sri Chaitanya School, Munnekolala, Marathahalli, Bangalore and she is currently in Grade 8. Likhitha loves to play Badminton and enjoys travelling. As said, 10-year-old Likhitha was introduced to the world of her passion - programming. Ever since then, there was no looking back for the child. Firstly, Likhitha realized that she has to get her hands on typing. So, she has installed one of the web apps for typing and has practised it regularly achieving a speed of 60words/min. Her parents explored various possibilities to cater to the girl’s interest and finally enrolled her in WhiteHat Jr, an online coaching platform that teaches coding to kids. Slowly, Likhitha started to explore more online sources where she can learn to develop apps and games. She also wanted to learn Python, a programming language that she found interesting. Her parents got her the related books using which she learnt the basics of the language. “I started playing around with codes in python, this is when the lockdown helped me to completely get hold of programming”, she told BOA. She eventually started answering few simple questions in stack overflow and began to upload her projects in Github after gaining enough learning from Corey Schafer, stack quest, Krish naik and others.

One More Step Higher:

As she started taking her initial steps into coding, Likhitha wanted to keep going further by getting certified. She approached Edureka. Though they were sceptical about the girl’s coping up levels owing to her young age initially, when they saw her YouTube videos, they were convinced of her potential. Thus, Likhitha took up the course “Python For Data Science” and learnt it alongside the IT professionals and got certified. “This is when I took my first certification in Data Science and completed it successfully”, she said with pride. Her thirst for programming increased after she finished the certification and this time, she applied for and completed the Android development course. Moving on further, she enrolled for Web development course with Edureka, during which period she got acquainted with Kaggle, a Machine Learning and Data Science Community, and has done a couple of basic projects. Simultaneously, she has uploaded many videos related to Data Science that included end-end projects and has even helped software engineers in completing their projects. Likhitha didn’t stop there. She came across the Data Trained Training Institute in her google search one day and resolved to enrol herself. “They were the ones who identified and supported my zeal towards Data Science and programming. They took a lot of interest in understanding my ability and passion towards Data Science”, said Likhitha. They have suggested her a Post Graduate Program in Data Science and gave her the required guidance. Likhitha is also doing an internship at the Fliprobo company while awaiting a Post Graduate Program certificate from Data Trained Training Institute.

The Girl Knows How To Overcome Challenges: 

Likhitha, who had to juggle between her online classes and passion, found it a little difficult to switch between concepts abruptly. But, with the ample support she received from her teachers and the principal, coupled with her personal zeal, she could pursue her data science courses. “The teachers and the principal of Shri Chaitanya Techno School Munnekolala Marathahalli were very accommodative and supportive in pursuing my data science courses”, she said with thankfulness. While doing her projects, Likhitha mentioned, that she used to get a lot of errors, some of which would even take 2-3 days to get solved. “I worked hard initially to find ways to resolve these errors using stack overflow and google”, shared Likhitha. But burning passion would never let anyone down and Likhitha is not an exception. She also attributes her fighting spirit and “go-getter” attitude to her parents. “My parents are my inspiration. They identified my passion, strengths, interests and created an environment to nurture passion”, she said. Likhitha overcame all those that have pulled her back and went on to achieve what waited for her outside the dark tunnel.

Along with successfully completing the certifications she opted for, she went on to bag the Data Science badge, Data Science tools badge, Data Science Visualization badge, Data Analysis badge – all from cognitive IBM in 2020. She has also received the Data science certificate from St. Martin's College in 2020.

Show Commitment To What You Love:

Likhitha takes her own example to tell people how important being committed to one’s passion is. She urges people to push themselves beyond their comfort zones to get what they want. “Commit to doing something that seems beyond your present ability, initially learning a programming language was perceived to be beyond my ability. But my commitment towards learning this language (Python) made me explore the right source to learn, understand and practise, once I learnt python data science seemed to be a subject beyond my learning ability, but my commitment and passion towards learning this skill (Data Science) helped me to learn and build many data science models/projects”, she said. She further goes on to give her piece of advice, “Explore and find what your inner call/passion is. Commit and Work on that to excel in that field so much that the same passion will become your profession. Later on, it's like playing games every day”.

Aspirations For The Years To Come:

Likhitha, who is expecting to complete her PGP program in Data science and internship successfully from Datatrained and Fliprobo in about 4 months, is looking forward to work in fortune companies like Google, IBM etc to attain hands-on experience in her field.

This ambitious girl wants to set up her own company in the years to come, after mastering Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. She wants to help solve problems using her expertise and represent India on the global dais.

In a scenario where children are found downloading games and apps that are killing their precious time, Likhitha’s story is one-of-a-kind and definitely deserves applause. We wish this girl of immense perseverance to reach where she wants to be. 

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