Gayam Bharath Kumar Reddy, hailing from Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district, decided to help the country’s efforts in combating Covid-19 upon learning about the numerous loss of innocent lives caused due to the pandemic. This 25-year-old technical genius along with his team invented a light-weight artificial intelligence-based website in five-days for tracking the COVID-19 symptoms.
An average student with a reserved nature, Bharath spent most of his time with computers, learning, and exploring new things. Though he was rejected by many engineering colleges due to low academic grades and was eventually forced to pursue mechanical engineering instead of computer science, his technical acumen earned him certification in ethical hacking.
Once rejected for pursuing the stream of computer science, now Bharath is invited to deliver lectures to the Computer Science faculty members of various colleges, including his own, on Cyber Security and Threats.
Bharath spoke his heart out regarding his vision, the website functioning, and much more in a candid conversation with LifeBeyondNumbers.
The Technical Genius
It all started when his father gifted him a computer on his birthday in the 7th standard. “Those days I spent most of my time learning all about computer hardware from my brother-in-law, an IT guy himself, and started running experiments with it,” Bharath says.
After two-years into learning, he heard of the concept called ‘hacking’: ‘a hacker can control the whole world with his fingers’, he was told. As those words strongly impacted his curious mind, he started researching on the topic and eventually, turned into an EC-Council certified ‘Ethical Hacker’.
“Ethical Hackers find the loopholes in the system/network with the permission of the target owner. They constantly seek further knowledge, freely share what they have discovered, and never intentionally damage data. I have personally taken part in training youths for defending the cyber-attacks, and assisted the Police Departments to get hold of the cybercriminals,” he says explaining his job profile.
He also works as the Co-founder of Bengaluru-based SPYRY Technologies, established in 2015 that helps corporate companies to recognize their cyber-vulnerabilities and avert adverse hacking by fraudulent hackers.
SPYRY focuses on providing specialized services called Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing like Web Application Security, Mobile Application Security, Network Security, IoT Security, Source Code Review, Incident Response, Cyber Forensics, and Training among other things and aims at building a secure cyber-space.
C19Raksha Website: How It Works
C19raksha is a lightweight artificial intelligence-based website for tracking the COVID-19 symptoms with minimum internet usage. It produces results within 2-minutes and is being considered an effective weapon for combatting Covid-19.
“Though the state and the central government had been attempting their best in dealing with the pandemic situation, the corona cases were growing rapidly all over the country. It was disheartening to see the loss of innocent lives due to the infection. Hence, with the help of my team members, I decided to take part in the country’s battle against the virus and developed a simple AI-based Website, in five days since I began,” Bharat tells us about the motivation behind.
The web application helps people to self-asses the covid-19 risks by enabling the users to know the risk levels faced by them. All they have to do is to answer 11 simple yes/no questions in the application form, which is available here on the website. These questions pertain to both symptomatic and asymptomatic behavior (whether the applicant has fever, headache, travel history, difficult to breathe, etc.) of the covid-19 infection and were formulated based on the guidelines of WHO and ICMR.
“After entering the details in the yes/no format, at the end of the test it will show the instant result of risk level in the three forms low/medium/high calculated using algorithmic programming,” Bharath says.
The information derived from the High-Risk applicant is forwarded to the Medical and Health Department through e-mail and the officials will take further measures to find out the applicant facing the risk of coronavirus. The website also lists out the probable precautions to be taken by the Low and Medium Risk applicant.
“So far, all over the country, there are at least 47,500 beneficiaries of the web application. 140 High-Risk applicants have been tracked down to date. And people misleading the tracker by entering the wrong information are also being tracked using their IP addresses,” he explains.
Since Bharath managed to come up with the entire application all by himself, all he had to spend was Rs. 800 for buying the website domain.
Milestones Achieved
In 2017, Bharath along with his team attempted the Limca Book of Records for a non-stop cybersecurity marathon and was successful in pulling it through.
“The previous record was 36hrs and we decided to do a 48hrs non-stop training program without sleep. We were not only successful but also broke the previous record by setting a new one at 50hrs 10min. We did not sleep through the course of the time and were only on liquids to save time,” Bharath proudly mentions.
Though it took a major toll on his physical and mental health, free Cyber Security Awareness Marathon earned him the due public attention with engineers, students, and police personnel attending it.
Besides in 2019, he has also been the recipient of the Global Young Leaders Fellowship and Karmaveer Chakra Award, India Star Youth Icon Award, National Youth Icon Award, Rashtriya Gaurav Samman to name a few.
He is also one of the Core-Members of National Information Security Council, the Chapter Leader of Karnataka state-sponsored Hackers-Day organization, and an Associate Member of National Cyber Safety and Security Standards Organization.
The Way Forward
“My target is to make 1 Lakh powerful cyber warriors for our country. Due to the pandemic situation as the world turns digital, cyber-attacks will increase in unimaginable ways. We need more ethical hackers for the protection of our country,” envisages Bharath.
The young minds stepping into the world with innocent eyes and kind heart may have to face a darker world faced with frauds and wrong-doings. Bharath thinks that despite being surrounded by the loved ones, the fight may be lonely yet giving up is not an option.
“As we embark on this journey, we encounter moments where we feel like giving up on ourselves and our dreams. We at times become discouraged and lose hope. However, this should not be the case. We should rather develop a positive attitude of not giving up and believe that success is possible” he believes resolutely.
The conventional path of education may not be the parameter always if there is adequate learning to support. Bharath sets a perfect example of that. Despite hardships, his technical genius has proved to take him a long way in pursuance of his dream.
The team of LifeBeyondNumbers wishes him the best for his future endeavors.