Advitiya dreams of becoming the darling of Indian students and parents with his innovative e-tech platform. He believes in living in the moment, as every new moment is an opportunity to do something better with your past.

Advitiya Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Genius Teacher, an ed-tech startup that is a quiz platform. It hosts educational quizzes for K–12 students. He started this application just six months ago and has achieved success in a short time, with downloads crossing a million. He was also the co-founder of housing.com, which he quit some time ago.

Advitiya says that he did his engineering at IIT-Bombay and had grown up inspired by people like Abdul Kalam and Kalpana Chawla. He is from Jammu. He recalls how, when he was looking for a house to stay in Mumbai after his graduation, he found the task very difficult, especially for bachelors. Thus, the idea of launching a house-buying and renting portal came to his mind. And he, along with his IIT friends, launched housing.com, which grew into a company with funding worth 200 million dollars and had 5000 employees. He thinks he is extremely lucky to have found such success in his early twenties.

Advitiya shares that they raised $100 million from Softbank. With money in their bank, they somehow lost focus and deviated from their goals. They started expanding fast but thin. When problems arose, he realized that money could not solve all the problems. Only a passionate person working 18 hours a day can do it. Eventually, they had to merge the company with PropTiger Realty. And later, he quit the company to start something new.

When asked about his role models, Advitiya says the first hero of his life was his grandfather, who was a poet and a Sahitya Academy Award-winning writer. He was also a teacher and taught hundreds of children. He realized that when his grandfather could impact thousands of families with his teaching, why couldn't he build an ed-tech company and impact millions of families? That was how the ‘Genius Teacher’ was born.

Advitiya thinks education is currently a burden for children. They have brought interest-based learning, the first to do that in the ed-tech sector. Through their innovative style, they started teaching math, science, and English through the medium of educational quizzing.

Advitiya says COVID was a storm that hit everyone. It was sad that people lost their lives and jobs and businesses were affected, but it was a boom for the ed-tech sector. He says that despite all the losses, we should think positively and believe that by coming together, we can fight any big problem. He thinks every problem or pain point is also an opportunity for you to do good. COVID has caused ed-tech to grow. He and his team have worked hard to provide a high-quality, world-class education.

Advitiya says both education and experience are important. He was fortunate to get a good education. He thinks education opens windows for you, but experience gives you learning.

Talking about leadership, Advitiya says a leader must have a big and common vision. And he should also have the ability to articulate that vision. He thinks he is lucky to have an amazing team. He says his company does not hire people who have to be told what to do. On the contrary, he hires smart people who have smart and innovative ideas.

In the field of education, according to Advitiya, there are three domains: basic learning, practicing, testing and quizzing, and doubt solving. His company deals with the second domain, which is testing, practicing, and quizzing. He wants his company to grow into something big. He wants his company to become the ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ of online educational quizzing.

If he gets a time machine and could travel back in time, Advitiya would like to go to his third year at Housing.com, when they had received a big $100 million in funding from Softbank, but that deviated them from their path. He would like to go back and be more focused.

Advitiya says he does meditation and vipassana and has no regrets in life. He likes to play football and is a national-level football player. He is inspired by Lionel Messi. He also sings and plays guitar. He also loves talking to friends.

For youngsters, Advitiya’s advice is that there is no limit to what you can do or achieve. Society puts you in a box. Come out of it. Life can be bigger and broader than that box. He says he always trusted his gut despite being discouraged by his relatives and friends. He says India needs the youth. In his opinion, there is a Sachin Tendulkar in all of us. He encourages youngsters to do crazy things. Then only we will see great entrepreneurs, great thinkers, and great achievers, and we will be able to leave a better India than what we got.