2Personal and Professional Background
Krishna Reddy: Amrulla and Sravani, its a pleasure for portal.idiya.co to conduct one of our first interviews with a young enterprising couple like you! Tell us briefly about yourselves.
Sravani and Amrulla Khan holidaying in Kerala
Amrulla Khan: Krishna, first of all, congratulations for your excellent initiative and thank you for giving me the opportunity to express myself. I am a post graduate in MCA from JNTU Kakinada. My professional career started when I was pursuing my graduation in chemistry and mathematics. In the 2nd year of graduation, I started to work as a paperboy and earned Rs. 300 per month, at that time I started reading newspapers and gaining general knowledge. After that, I started as a tutor for high school for physically challenged students in Kakinada. I stayed there for almost one and a half a year, that period taught me a lot. After my graduation, I got placed in NFCL, a urea production industry as a plant operator in Kakinada, famous for Nagarjuna Urea. After working there for one year I decided to go for post graduation in computer applications (MCA). So I participated in the entrance test and got admission in JNTU, Kakinada. For the next two years, I was studying and working in NFCL, managing both classes and shifts. But in the final year of MCA, I decided to quit job and study full-time and teach part time in a computer institute. By the end of MCA I got placed in Wipro as a Software Engineer, and I started my IT career.
My hobbies are playing video games, watching animated movies, episodes, and programming. I love to play racing games and secret agent games. My first animated series was Duck Tales aired in Doordarshan. After that, the list of series and movies kept on growing and growing. Just before giving this interview I saw Secret Life of Pets movie.
In this process I accidentally met my soulmate Sravani – Yess! she is a Hindu girl and I am a Muslim boy – and married her in 2013. It is a great feeling to have her in my life. I take this opportunity to thank my Father, Mother, Sisters, Brothers, Friends and last but not least my soulmate for supporting me at every stage and not leaving me alone at difficult phases. Without you all I would never be here, thanks a lot for everything.
Sravani Kumari: Krishna, First of all allow me to congratulate you on this great initiative iDiya.org. I am the managing director of www.smartgnan.com, an e-learning portal targeting rural youth of India. My husband Amrulla Khan has got this innovative idea of educating the rural area people and together we started this company. He is also an ex Wipro IT professional and is presently working in ARUP India private limited as a Senior Engineer. I did masters in computer science and also did diploma in communicative skills from GITAM university Vishakhapatanam. As my father works in railways, my childhood was very adventurous and got a unique opportunity to learn new a culture every two to three years (as he used to get transfers frequently).
Sravani participating in a spontaneous Rangoli competition in Kerala during a holiday with her husband Amrulla Khan
My passions, talents and hobbies:
I love to teach, dance and go for long drives. I perform Bharathanatyam as well as modern dance. I have given numerous performances right from my childhood and also won many prizes. Now I started doing choreography for young children on various occasions like Independence Day, Republic Day and also for some competitions. Not only dance, but I like to participate in various sports like hockey, throw ball, shuttle badminton and volley ball. I played hockey at the district level as a goalkeeper. While playing hockey I used to travel to different places which made me learn about different cultures and created a new hobby of visiting new places. So far I have traveled almost all of India except Jammu and Kashmir. Apart from these I love Harry Potter, Narnia kind of fiction movies very much.
Our Startup SmartGnan.com
We (myself and my husband), came up with an innovative idea in the education sector. India has potentially highly talented students but lacks in proper guidance, facilities, and opportunities. The main intention of our startup www.smartgnan.com is to bring up these hidden talents especially from the youth of rural India. Our startup is an e-learning platform currently concentrating on technology courses and we planned to deliver in Indian languages along with English. Unlike other e-learning companies we are providing these courses available at very low cost so anyone can afford it. We are also visiting different educational institutions and conducting activities and events which help students in understanding computer programming. As part of this idea, we have recruited employees from rural areas and trained them to be competent IT professionals. I am really happy to say that our startup is helping our employees financially and technically.
