While addressing to a thunderous crowd at Britain’s Wembley Stadium, packed with some 60,000 people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned the name of Imran Khan from Rajasthan who made 50 mobile applications and dedicated them to the students free of charge.
“My India resides in people like Imran Khan,” Modi said.
37-year-old Imran Khan is a mathematics teacher in a government school in Rajasthan’s Alwar has made 42 Android apps and dedicated them to students free of charge. He has also created over a hundred websites to help students. These apps have been downloaded by 2.5 million users until now, the screen views alone have come up to 18 million.
According to Hindustan Times detailing Khan’s achievements in the field of mobile applications won him a name Mister Android.
This is even while he having no formal education in computer or app development. Khan says he learned programming from books of his younger brother who studied B-tech.
“My younger brother, Idrees, left his books at home after he bagged a job at a Gurgaon software firm. He had completed his B Tech in Computer Science from the Institute of Engineering and Technology in Alwar. As I was free after school, I began looking up those books. I learnt html and designed a website,” he says. “Last month, when I ran Google Analytics, I found it had got 2.5 lakh page views.”
Imran even participated in a national seminar on education organised by the ministry of human resources in September 2014, and undertook sessions on IT in education at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, with trainee IAS officers as his audience.
According to Imran, his app journey began at a time when he didn’t even know what the word stood for. “The then district collector of Alwar, Ashutosh AT Pednekar, saw my website and sent for me. He asked me to design the website for the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET). Pednekar was the one who suggested that I start developing apps. I had no clue what an app was – he had to show me some on his tablet,” Imran recalls. While Pednekar believes he was lucky to chance upon a gem like Imran.
I like to make cool and creative interfaces. My interfaces are always full of refreshing ideas. I like challenges, without challenge I can’t work,” says Khan who claims web development is his hobby on his website.