Teenage Indian Student Wins Recognition In Singapore For Building 25 Million Dollar Tech Startup

CIOReviewIndia Team | Monday, 04 January 2021, 13:41 IST

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A 19-year old Indian student, Harsh Dalal, pursuing diploma in business administration at Singapore Polytechnic has earned recognition for running a USD 25 million tech startup of his own.

Harsh has built the startup with four applications in his teenage while schooling.

Dalal, being the CEO, had developed a 120-employee Team Labs’ business in eight cities and his company’s clients include the Coca-Cola Company, Google and Hilton, Channel News Asia reported on Sunday, featuring Dalal among young entrepreneurs shaping Singapore into a smart nation and for running a USD 25 million tech startup under the programme – “On The Red Dot”.

The programme is Singapore’s popular nickname under which the channel runs weekly stories on ordinary Singaporeans, celebrating their resilience, identity and sense of belonging. Dalal is a permanent resident of Singapore.

The company, with four applications has raised USD 9.8 million in Series A funding in 2017 from investors including Grand Canyon Capital, Startup Capital Ventures and sovereign wealth fund Korea Investment Corporation.

Dalal said that he has his options open for going public or exiting after an acquisition.

Dalal’s company, when valued at USD 25 million prior COVID-10, has not been profitable.

Dalal learned coding at the age of 11 by spending hours watching YouTube tutorials and went on to jailbreak a cast-off iPhone 4, a gift from his mother.

Dalal was triggered by the iOS system, and started scouring Apple Developer forums for more information and made connections with four strangers aged between 14 and 17, from the United States, Russia, Norway and Singapore.

These people were joined by a common interest, who would eventually become business partners. They exchanged tips on coding, app development, and jailbreaking iPhones. Their discussions about jailbreaking however, got removed from the forums.

Dalal said, “I didn’t know there was a rule that you couldn’t talk about all these kinds of things on the developers’ forum of Apple,” said Dalal. He added, “Luckily, I managed to get their emails before we got banned, and then we collaborated.”

Now, Dalal will be facing challenges as he will run against the big boys like Google, Microsoft, Zoom etc. said in the report.

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