Shravan and Sanjay Kumaran, the youngest CEOs share market gyan with b-school students at 'wedvaan'

Chennai-based siblings Shravan and Sanjay, joint founders of Go Dimensions - a company that creates gaming and learning software for mobile phones - addressed 120 business management students, including those from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad and Kozhikode), today.

The talk is part of a lecture series to be delivered by the CEOs and business tycoons for Wedvaan, the annual three-day festival organized by Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research at their campus in Matunga. The audience comprising students in their early 20s is impressionable and ambitious. The two speakers, Shravan and Sanjay, are aged 13 and 10 respectively, and like any other boys, spend half their day in school learning math and English and history.Shravan, the president of his firm, is a Std VIII student while Sanjay, the chief executive officer, studies in Std VI. Their company is a year-and-amonth-old, and has launched five applications that are available for free download at the Apple Store, and encouraged by the response, is launching the paid applications this year. The boys, who missed school on Friday to make it for the fest, say stage fear has never been a problem. “We spoke at IIM-Bengaluru last year, so it isn’t an issue to address students who are twice our age,” says Shravan.The boys are accompanied by their parents who say life hasn’t changed much since they started their company in January 2012. “They have a routine when they return from school. They play for an hour and then get on to complete the programming for their business projects,” says the lads’ father, Kumaran Surendran, himself a director of a software company. Sanjay, the CEO, cheekily adds, “Our friends in the school also play some of the games we have developed but they don’t fully understand what we do.”The boys say their started off with an idea two years ago, which they bounced off their dad, and things started to roll. In a couple of years, they picked up the nuances of programming, and launched their firm which required very little capital. Kaustubh Dhargalkar, a professor at the Welingkar Institute, says the boys’ understanding of market dynamics was “astounding”. Says Dhargalkar, “I first met them when we shared a stage at a TED event in Pune last year. I was amazed at their understanding of the market. They were able to identify an opportunity and monetise their business. We could learn from their experience.” Akshay Bahadur, 23, a first-year student of the PG diploma in management course, plans to specialise in marketing next year. While he admits he is looking forward to the lecture by Kunwer Sachdev, founder and managing director of SU-KAM, he is equally curious to learn more about the boys. “Mr Sachdev runs a Rs 3,000-crore empire that he started from scratch and worked on for 10 years. At the same time, I think these kids who know their business so well is worth a listen,” says Akshay. Age isn’t a factor, says Neha Bhandari, another first year student who claims she doesn’t mind the fact that the speakers will be ten years younger than her. “They are being looked at as prodigies. In the business world, only numbers speak and you have to be humble enough to listen to those who have achieved something. We also have a talk by two dabbawallahs who will explain how their celebrated distribution system works,” says Neha.