hey, i’m riza

i'm a founder, developer, and freshman computer science student at the university of western australia

i started coding at 9 by making minecraft plugins. i still try to keep the same rhythm: ship quickly, learn in public, and find people who push me.

what i've been up to:

currently building b2b ai saas for industrial distributors.
received the full-ride scholarship from maharashtra cm devendra fadnavis at uwa's campus launch
co-founded astrail at hackerhouse in blr, making apis easier for ai agents to use; we got a yc s26 interview and made the top 10% for f26
worked as a contract founding engineer at rift (formerly soar flights)
placed 3rd out of 4,500+ participants at the openai hackathon, and won 8 of the 10 hackathons i participated in overall
selected for founders, inc. canopy s26 and built starcy in san francisco alongside other founders
spent some time as a technical founder building starcy, an ai assistant for the iphone's dynamic island, working on low-latency websockets and ios background behavior
did two years of jee coaching in hyderabad on a scholarship. jee wasn't for me, but the friends and the city made it worth it
worked as an ai researcher with the government of kerala in 2023, building coin counter, an opencv system to count and sort coins, when i was 14
selected as a top100coders fellow in 2023 from 5,000+ applicants, finished in the top 15, and received a personal award from the chief minister of kerala through KSUM and mu learn
placed 1st at digital fest four years straight, then 1st nationally and 2nd at an international coding competition in ajman, uae, top 0.08% of 2,500+ participants; cybersquare sponsored the trip from kerala to dubai
one of 50 invited to a private dinner with yc partners jared friedman and jon xu out of 25,000 startup school india applicants; pitched what i was building and met founders from iit bombay, stanford, and harvard, people from top firms, olympiad winners, and a top-30 all-india ranker
selected to attend yc startup school
qualified for stage 2 of the indian national olympiad of ai in 2026, working across machine learning, python, and ai problem-solving
placed 1st regionally at the CBSE national science exhibition 2024 in computational thinking and represented kerala nationally in the category
started and led my school's coding and robotics club from 2020 to 2024, running workshops and mentoring 400+ students
invited to interview with entrepreneur first india and z fellows
reached the toastmasters international finals
received an official ministerial commendation from the government of kerala
keynoted IRCC at 14 alongside nambi narayanan (ex-ISRO)

i grew up building small games, shipping discord bots, selling little projects, and somehow turning parts of that into money.

i’ve been into football since i was pretty young and was part of kerala blasters u12. i spend a lot of time juggling a football and trying trick shots. i support manchester city, and kevin de bruyne, messi, and ronaldo are some of my favourite players. i’m also into minecraft bedwars and go swimming sometimes.

btw, if you’re building something, figuring stuff out, curious about tech, or just another founder, student, or developer looking to connect, i’m mostly active on discord (@rizawastaken) and always down for a convo. happy to share what i know or hear what you’re working on.

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