Ghaziabad boy wins Apple scholarship for developing Apple Watch app

A student of Delhi Public School Ghaziabad (DPSG – Meerut road), Anushk Mittal claims to have earned over $4000 from his application - Sleepisle. The app is available in the App Store for iOS users for $12.99 and witnessed more than 3000 downloads have been made so far.

A student of Delhi Public School Ghaziabad (DPSG – Meerut road), Anushk Mittal claims to have earned over $4000 from his application - Sleepisle. The app is available in the App Store for iOS users for $12.99 and witnessed more than 3000 downloads have been made so far. (AFP)

The city has another reason to be proud of as a 17 year old resident of Ghaziabad has developed a mobile application for which he has been awarded a WWDC Scholarship -2016, sponsored by the mobile phone giant Apple Inc.

A student of Delhi Public School Ghaziabad (DPSG - Meerut road), Anushk Mittal claims to have earned over $4000 from his application - Sleepisle. The app is available in the App Store for iOS users for $12.99 and witnessed more than 3,000 downloads have been made so far.

Anushk, who gave his board exams this year, had applied for the WWDC scholarship-2016 organised by Apple Inc in May 2015. He started working on the application during his summer holidays in June last year. The application, according to the guidelines of the program, was supposed to demonstrate the 'creative use of technologies'.

"SleepIsle is a sleep tracking and efficiency improvement app that aims to change the way we sleep today. It's an Apple Watch and iPhone app and has also been awarded with fbStart BootStrap program which provide services like Adobe, Dropbox and domain name worth $30,000," he said.

The application helps the user sleep by providing soothing vibrations and monitoring the heart rate. It aims to improve a person's sleep efficiency. ( )

The application helps the user sleep by providing soothing vibrations and monitoring the heart rate. It aims to improve a person's sleep efficiency. ( )

The application helps the user sleep by providing soothing vibrations and monitoring the heart rate. It aims to improve a person's sleep efficiency.

"I have always been a sleepyhead. However, I researched about the sleeping trends across the globe and found that more than 80% Americans suffer from sleep deprivation. This gave me an idea to work on for the application," said Anushk.

The winners of the scholarship were announced in the first week of May.

"There are thousands of applications submitted for the scholarship every year out of only a few hundred are selected. I feel lucky to be one of the 350 scholarship recipients all over the world. Along with the scholarship, a ticket to Apple's developers' conference held in San Francisco has also been awarded to each recipient," added the Ashok Nagar resident.

In addition to developing the application, he was also required to write an essay on the coding process of the application.

Anushk scored 93 percent in his board exams this year and has now taken admission in Georgia Institute of Technology in London to study Computer Science. ( )

Anushk scored 93 percent in his board exams this year and has now taken admission in Georgia Institute of Technology in London to study Computer Science. ( )

"I started developing websites since I was 10 and started developing mobile applications when I was 13. However, when I applied for the scholarship, I did not have much clue about coding for iOS software. From zero knowledge on iOS development, i learnt 'Swift', a language made easy for any new developer, and my motivation drove my interest to spend my spare time after school in this effort," he said.

Anushk scored 93 percent in his board exams this year and has now taken admission in Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA to study Computer Science.

According to his teachers, Anushk has always been a bright student.

"We made it sure that Anushk participated in all inter school computer coding competitions. I also wrote his recommendation letter for his admission to Georgia Institute of Technology in London. We have groomed the student right from the start to help his achieve his aim," said Jyoti Gupta, principal of DPSG.