Life in an IIT Building an AI tool at IIT Hyderabad, to landing a job in Japan

New DelhiUpdated: Aug 2, 2026 10:29 AM IST My father had a line he used often: ‘Jack of all trades, master of none, still better than master of one’. He worked in distribution and marketing for watch companies like HMT and Sonata, and believed that a person who could move across domains, that is, someone who refused to be boxed in by a single skill, would always have more to offer than someone who only ever went deep in one direction. He is no longer here, but I carry that philosophy with me everywhere. Last year, IIT Hyderabad gave Guna Shekhar Reddy a gold medal for it.I am in the final year of my MTech in Techno-Entrepreneurship at IIT Hyderabad. I came here through GATE after completing my BTech in Mechanical Engineering at Vasavi College of Engineering, Hyderabad. In undergrad, my CGPA was 7.27. At IITH, it is 9.51. That gap is not just about studying harder; it is about finally understanding what a CGPA actually means and what it shapes going forward. Growing up in Hyderabad I was born in Nagaram village in Suryapet district, but I grew up in Hyderabad and did all my schooling there at Johnson Grammar School, Habsiguda, on the ICSE curriculum, from LKG all the way through Class 10. My mother is the Head of the Department of Commerce at St Pious X Degree College in Nacharam. My father, before he passed away, spent his career in watch distribution and marketing, and it was he who gave me the philosophy that I have tried to build everything around. One thing I got lucky with is geography. IIT Hyderabad is technically in Sangareddy. It was about three hours from home, but it is close enough that I travel back most months to spend time with my family and friends. That connection has meant a great deal, especially this past year. Getting to IIT through GATE My path to IIT was through GATE rather than JEE. During the Covid years, I went deep into the world of entrepreneurship, reading, following the space, trying to understand what it actually takes to build a company. What fascinated me was how genuinely hard it is, how much there is to learn, and how much I wanted to take that risk properly. When I came across the Techno-Entrepreneurship programme at IITH, it felt like exactly what I was looking for. What got me through GATE preparation was not brilliance but consistency. My mock test scores were not always great, but I kept at it without slowing down, and that steadiness carried me through in the end. First time living away from homeStory continues below this ad I joined IIT Hyderabad in August 2024. My undergrad college was close to home and had mostly local students, so coming to IIT was a real culture shock, in the best possible way. Everyone in my department seemed to be from a different state. Meeting people from other countries came a bit later, and that opened up an entirely different way of thinking. What surprised me most about IIT was the freedom — freedom of thought, freedom to pursue many things at once, freedom to be interested in domains that had nothing to do with your department. People from completely unrelated fields talking openly and passionately about their work. I found I could stay involved in a few clubs at a time, pick up working knowledge across different areas, and let each one inform the others, exactly the way my father had always described a life well-lived. The CGPA that finally made sense The jump from 7.27 to 9.51 is not something I take lightly or explain away easily. In undergrad, I simply did not understand what a CGPA means or what it shapes later. At IITH, that clarity came early. Once I genuinely grasped what was at stake — not as pressure, but as understanding — the effort followed naturally. It eventually came together in the Academic and Co-curricular Excellence Award, a gold medal for balancing strong academic performance with co-curricular work spanning many different domains. My father’s line is still the best way I know to describe how I approached it. Solving a real p