If you are on Quora, a question-and-answer site, then chances are you must have stumbled upon the answers of Balaji Vishwanathan. With close to 3,57,000 followers on Quora, Balaji Viswanathan, CEO of Invent (humanoid robots for customer interaction), is the most followed person on Quora. He also has over 3,700 Quora answers to a diverse range of questions in his name.
HashInclude, the computer science society of Cluster Innovation Centre (CIC) and Autonomi, the robotics society of Cluster Innovation Centre organized a meet up with him on Monday, 28th August 2017. The insightful event which began at 2 PM on 28th August 2017 was attended by an enthusiastic crowd.
Unlike, conventional meet-ups the event did not feature any speech by the guest. Instead, Mr Balaji Viswanathan spent time addressing the questions from the audience, which was appreciated by students. In the course of question and answers, he spoke about his career as a software engineer at Microsoft Head Quarters, Live Labs, and Windows Phone. He also spoke about his return to India and tryst with his now-successful start-ups. Talking about ideas and innovations he said, “Every great idea looks crazy to people, you just have to pursue them seriously. Right now as a student you have time, the biggest luxury in the world, to pursue your passions”
Kirti Krishan, a student who attended the event said, “It was more of a Quora like question and answer session than a normal talk, literally. There wasn’t any pretentious motivational public speaking. My take away from this session would be his entrepreneurial advice that- patience and trust in your venture is the only way for success”
Utkarsh Mittal, one of the organisers said, “We wanted to invite Viswanathan since he is currently the CEO of Inventor Robotics, which aims to revolutionise the field of AI enabled hardware in India. He has also founded and been a part of various IT, Fintech and Edtech based ventures. All of this resonates with the students of CIC. Besides, meeting the most followed Quora user is anyway exciting.”
You can find the live recording of the event here.
Feature Picture Credits: HashInclude
Niharika Dabral
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