Microsoft offers Virender Raika, son of a labourer, Rs 4.85-crore annual
package for his extraordinary anti-hacking skills. He is a
golden boy who never had a silver spoon in his mouth. He had dreams, but no
wings. Yet he flies high. Twenty-one-year-old Virender Raika, who worked as a
hawker to fund his studies, has developed an extraordinary anti-hacking
software which has earned him a plum job at Microsoft.
The
whopping Rs 4.85 crore annual package offered by the software giant comes as an
add-on for a lad who couldn’t go to the IIT — despite getting through the
entrance — as he had no money.
Born in
Pehowa village in Kurukshetra, Virender says the going was always tough for
him. “After my father who works as a labourer fell sick, I had to take up the
job of a hawker. I soon realised that the money won't suffice. So, I started
giving Physics tuitions,” says the boy who was in Panchkula to interact with
students.
A class X
topper, Virender did part-time jobs to fund his Class 12 education. He
qualified a scholarship entrance to study further and even got through the IIT,
but couldn’t pursue it due to lack of funds.
Quiz him on
his anti-hacking project and his eyes light up. “The idea to develop an anti-hacking
system struck me while I was watching a movie. I saw a girl hacking into a
system and then I thought why not develop a system that has a foolproof
security. There are ways to hack into a system but no permanent way to secure
it. So by working on various cyber theories, I made an anti-hacking system,”
says the tech-wizard.
Virender
gave a demo of his project through video-conferencing to a group of expert
hackers at Microsoft’s office in Hyderabad. The Chief Financial officer of the
Microsoft, Peter Klein, who was keenly observing the demo online, was so
impressed by Virender’s skills that he offered him a job straightaway. The
Haryana boy, who is pursing his BTech from IGNOU, has been told to join in
November.
On his
future plans, Virender says he wants to open his own company in India. “I want
to do something for my country. We are so dependent on the US for technology. I
want to turn the tide,” he says. Virender’s father Gyan Chand and mother
Shinder still don’t know what exactly their son has developed. “We both are
illiterate. We just know that Virender has got a job of 4.85 crore and
companies from China and Japan are pursuing him,” says Gyan Chand.
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