Two Indian teenagers awarded Thiel fellowship

Two Indian teenagers have been conferred with the prestigious "20 Under 20" Thiel Fellowship 2013, worth USD 100,000 each, which allows youngsters to pursue their own business idea.
Indian resident Ritesh Agarwal and Pao-Alto based Diwank Singh Tomer will now be mentored by the likes of PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk as well as Facebook co-founder Sean Parker as they work on technical projects and learn about entrepreneurship.
The only Indian resident on this list, Agarwal, 19, is the founder of Oravel.Com, a site gaining popularity for hotel booking in India.
The youngster who idolises Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg says he has always dreamt of solving large problems using cutting edge new-age technologies.

Now, he wants to use technology to bring affordable and standardised accommodation options to people in emerging economies across the world including India.
As part of the selection process, Agarwal was in the US for three weeks during which he worked closely with Thiel Fellowship team, top Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists (VCs) and entrepreneurs besides presenting a paper at world's largest tech conference 'Tech Crunch Disrupt' in New York.

Admitting that his family initially was not very happy about his decision to quit studies and turn an entrepreneur, Agarwal has now managed to allay their concerns.
"After the mentors explained the potential to them, the support I have received from my family is amazing," he said.

Talking about his latest success, Agarwal said: "My acceleration process at VentureNursery (a company that helps start-ups) has been the most vital contributor for this fellowship," he said.
"Intensive acceleration process by a dozen plus mentors and experts led by Ravi Kiran and Shravan Shroff helped me mature from a young passionate founder to an accountable startup CEO. The support and partnership helped me grow both emotionally and monetarily," Agarwal added.
The other Indian on the list, 19-year-old Tomer, dropped out of college in India to work on an online platform for learning to code.
"Aside from his love of poetry, he is an exceptional hacker and engineer who was awarded the Mozilla WebFWD fellowship for his efforts to improve learning online," the foundation said about Tomer who now lives in Pao Alto.

Besides the two Indians, majority of the candidates are from US, including drop-outs from Harvard, MIT and other elite universities.