Samaira Mehta, a 10-year old coder, is the new sensation in the Silicon Valley. With her programming skills, she has founded a company named CoderBunnyz that develops games for children to teach them coding.
As reported by the Business Insider, her skills have made top companies like Google and Microsoft to feature her in their keynote events. She has been coding since the age of six, and the company she founded earned national media recognition with websites like NBC and Medium covering stories on her.
She’s A Powerpuff Girl!
After bagging the second position at Think Tank Learning’s Pitchfest in 2016, marketers from Cartoon Network spotted her and featured her in a video involving real-life Powerpuff girls to inspire other your girls. This is where things began working out for her.
After the video, she started selling her game on Amazon and has sold more than 1,000 boxes worth $35,000 in just one year.
Yes, 1 Billion Kids Can Code
Daughter of Mr. Rakesh Mehta, an Intel engineer and Sun Microsystems/Oracle alumni, Samaira has initiated a campaign called Yes, 1 Billion Kids Can Code with the help of her 5-year old brother Aadit. The campaign involves urging people to donate game boxes to schools. She then conducts workshops to teach coding to the students using the donated game boxes.
Samaira said, “In the world there are over 1 billion kids. There are people who are willing to donate Coder Bunnyz boxes to schools, and to people in need all over the world, who want to learn coding.”
After witnessing impressive sales, she has also launched a sequel to the game that makes learning code interesting with the help of AI. The sequel has been named as CoderMindz and is deemed as the first ever AI board game.
An Entrepreneur In Making
Her fame has led her to participate as a speaker in more than 60 workshops held in Silicon Valley. At a workshop organized by Google, she met the tech giant’s Chief Culture Officer Stacy Sullivan who offered Samaira an opportunity to work at Google after she has passed her college.
Mehta said, “After my back-to-back workshops at Google headquarters, we talked for an hour. She told me I was doing great and once I get out of college, I can come work for Google.”
In her response, Samaira politely said that she is not sure whether she wants to work for Google or not as she wants to be an entrepreneur. She has also met Mark Zuckerberg who chatted with her about her coding skills and said: “You’re doing great.”
Her Future Plans
Samaira has big plans for the future. She has chosen a charity fund for donating the profits generated from her company. The charity named PATH works towards ending homelessness.
“It ends homelessness and helps people rebuild skills, and I care about homeless,” she says.
