Four NGOs, 20 volunteers and a STEM project called Nirvana

Shubhranshu Jha puts it in seven words: "talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not."

Many students, he says, never discover their potential because they lack exposure to STEM, innovation and mentorship. He found those opportunities himself through competitions, projects and research experiences. "Project Nirvana is my attempt to help more students find theirs," he says.

“I do not want to inherit the future. I want to build the one that does not exist yet.”

Shubhranshu Jha

Nirvana is a talent-discovery and innovation-development initiative focused on helping young people experience STEM. So far he has partnered with four education-focused NGOs and a school, mobilised a team of 20 volunteers and connected with over 50 students. The project is now expanding into additional schools and communities.

The spark came from watching Mark Rober videos as a kid, he says. For much of his childhood, learning had meant memorising concepts and preparing for exams. For the first time, he says, he saw science as something he could actively participate in rather than simply study. "That spark transformed my trajectory," he says.

He studies at Gujarat Public School Vadodara. One of the projects he developed was Eutrobot, a waterbody purification and monitoring robot designed to help restore rivers and lakes. More recently he developed VAANI, an AI-powered screening system that investigates the use of speech biomarkers for the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases. He says his work has received recognition and support from innovation ecosystems associated with IIT Madras and IIM Mumbai.

The biggest lesson, he says, was not technical. "Opportunity compounds." A single project can lead to a competition, a competition to mentorship, and mentorship to confidence, he says, and confidence "can lead to entirely new ambitions."

Today, he says, his vision extends beyond his own projects. He wants students to discover opportunities they never knew existed.

"The next breakthrough idea may already exist in the mind of a young student today," he says.