Bengaluru teens'-developed social app vPledge launched

Technology education startup AcadGild on Saturday launched social app vPledge developed by its teenage students, 12-year-old Prateek Mahesh and 13-year-old Priyal Jain.

vPledge stimulates the general public to pick up and fulfil social causes like plant 10 trees, donate food to 10 people, using public transport only and others.

"I wanted to develop an app, after discussing with my parents and mentors we have decided to develop an app for social causes," said New Horizon Public School's seventh grade student Mahesh who learnt Android programming at AcadGild.

Delhi Public School student and eighth-grader Jain said the app is linked to Facebook to let an individual tell her friends about a noble cause they have taken for greater societal good and later on challenge three of their friends for similar causes.

"We would like to collaborate with NGOs in the future to popularise the pledges. Our aim is to hit one million downloads in six months," said Jain.

Another AcadGild student, 13-year-old Samarth Grover has also created the mobile version of the Tic-Tac-Toe game which can connect two people via Bluetooth without the need of internet to play.

"It is inspiring to see young minds adopt technology with such ease and enthusiasm. Right training and mentorship program can impact the development of programming skills," said Vikalp Jain, co-founder, AcadGild.

According to Vikalp Jain, father of Priyal Jain, the startup aims to create an ecosystem for skill development that is relevant to today's rapidly evolving digital world.

Employing online teaching model, the startup taught Android, Unity 2D, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Robotics and Python to school children in the summer.

AcadGild was founded in December 2014 by Vikalp Jain and serial entrepreneur Vinod Dham. It is promoted by Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh's entrepreneurial platform GrowthStory and has raised nearly $3 million funding thus far.

--IANS

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