YUNOVA Stories
People who built their skillsजिन लोगों ने अपने skill खुद बनाए
True stories of people who built a skill step by step, written from public sources, and where you can start on the same skill for free.ऐसे लोगों की सच्ची कहानियाँ जिन्होंने कदम-दर-कदम एक skill सीखा, public sources से लिखी हुई, और वह जगह जहाँ आप वही skill free में शुरू कर सकते हैं।
Money & FinanceAmartya Sen: from Santiniketan to the Nobel, economics for human welfare
Amartya Sen · Economist and philosopher, 1998 Nobel laureate in economic sciencesAmartya Sen was born on a university campus in Santiniketan in 1933 and, by his own account, has lived on one campus or another ever since. A famine he saw as a boy and questions he argued over as a student in Calcutta became the work of his life. In 1998 he received the Nobel prize in economic sciences for his contributions to welfare economics. His story shows economics as a tool for understanding how people actually live.Read story →
Data & AIAndrew Ng: the professor who put machine learning online for everyone
Andrew Ng · Co-founder of Coursera and founding lead of Google BrainFor years, machine learning was taught to a few hundred students at a time in top universities. Then, in 2011, Stanford professor Andrew Ng put his class online for free and more than 100,000 people signed up. That experiment grew into Coursera, and Ng went on to lead AI work at Google and Baidu. His story shows how patient, step-by-step teaching can open a hard subject to the whole world.Read story →
TechnologyAndy Jassy: the marketing manager who built Amazon Web Services
Andy Jassy · Founding leader of Amazon Web Services and Amazon's CEOWhen you launch a server or store a file on AWS, you are using a business that Andy Jassy helped imagine and then led for well over a decade. He did not start as an engineer. He joined Amazon in 1997 with a background in marketing and business, learned the company from the inside, and turned an idea about sharing Amazon's own infrastructure into a cloud platform used by more than a million customers.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentB. R. Ambedkar: the scholar who chaired the drafting of India's Constitution
B. R. Ambedkar · Jurist, economist, social reformer and chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of IndiaBhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born into a community that the society of his time treated as untouchable. He was kept apart in school, yet he went on to earn degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, qualify as a barrister, and chair the committee that drafted the Constitution of India. His story shows how far careful, patient study can carry a person, and why the text he helped write is worth reading closely.Read story →
Design & CreativeDon Norman: the scientist who said bad design is not your fault
Don Norman · Cognitive scientist and author of The Design of Everyday ThingsHave you ever pushed a door that needed a pull, or pressed the wrong button on a remote, and felt foolish? Don Norman spent his career arguing that the fault was not yours. An electrical engineer who became a cognitive scientist, he wrote The Design of Everyday Things, helped found the field of user-centred design and, at Apple, held the first job title to use the words User Experience. His story shows that good design starts with understanding how people think.Read story →
TechnologyDonald Knuth: the patient scholar who wrote the book on algorithms
Donald Knuth · Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeXWhen you study how fast a sorting method runs or why one search beats another, you are standing on ground that Donald Knuth helped lay. A mathematics student who fell for an early IBM computer, he spent decades writing The Art of Computer Programming, a series that treats algorithms with the care of a scientist. Along the way he built TeX, won the Turing Award, and showed that slow, deep study is a real strategy.Read story →
Business & ProductivityE. Sreedharan: the Metro Man who finished on time
E. Sreedharan · Civil engineer known as India's Metro ManIn India, big public projects are often expected to run late and over budget. E. Sreedharan became famous for doing the opposite. From a cyclone-wrecked bridge in Tamil Nadu to the Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro, he delivered difficult projects on schedule and kept his teams disciplined and honest. His story is one of the clearest examples in India of what good project management looks like in practice.Read story →
StudyFali S. Nariman: seven decades of reading, argument and principle
Fali S. Nariman · Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and constitutional juristFali Sam Nariman began practising law in Bombay in 1950, the year India's Constitution came into force, and was still writing about it in 2023. In between he argued some of the most important constitutional cases the Supreme Court has heard, resigned a high government post on principle, and read widely all his life. For anyone preparing for CLAT, his career shows what a lifetime of careful reading and clear argument can build.Read story →
Data & AIGeoffrey Hinton: the scientist who kept faith in neural networks
Geoffrey Hinton · Computer scientist and pioneer of deep learningFor much of his career, Geoffrey Hinton worked on an idea that most of the field had given up on: that computers could learn the way networks of brain cells do. He kept going through the decades when neural networks were unfashionable, and with his students he helped spark the deep learning boom behind today's image recognition and chatbots. His story is about patience, curiosity and the value of building on solid foundations.Read story →
Language & CommunicationGulzar: from a Mumbai garage to the Jnanpith Award
Gulzar · Urdu poet, lyricist and film directorGulzar was a teenager doing odd jobs in Bombay when he was writing couplets in his spare time. Over more than seven decades he became one of the best-known Urdu poets of his era, a lyricist for Hindi cinema, a film director, and in 2024 a winner of India's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award. His story shows how a love of language, fed every day, can grow into a life's work.Read story →
Data & AIHans Rosling: the doctor who made data tell the truth
Hans Rosling · Swedish doctor, professor of global health and co-founder of GapminderHans Rosling was a Swedish doctor who became one of the world's best-loved teachers of data. He used moving charts, toy bricks and even teacups to show how health, wealth and population were really changing across countries. He never claimed numbers were magic. He claimed they were the only honest starting point for a good argument. His story shows that data analysis is not about software. It is about seeing clearly and explaining clearly.Read story →
TechnologyJames Gosling: the Canadian engineer who created Java
James Gosling · Designer of the Java programming languageEvery Java program you write is compiled for a virtual machine, so the same code can run on many different computers. That idea grew out of the work of James Gosling, a computer scientist from Calgary who did the original design of the Java language at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. His story shows how years of building tools, editors and compilers prepared him to create one of the most widely used languages in the world.Read story →
Money & FinanceLuca Pacioli: the friar who put double-entry bookkeeping in print
Luca Pacioli · Renaissance mathematician who published the first printed account of double-entry bookkeepingEvery time an accountant records a debit and a matching credit, they are following a method that was first set out in print more than five hundred years ago. Luca Pacioli, an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar, did not invent double-entry bookkeeping, and he never claimed to. What he did was explain the method Venetian merchants already used, clearly enough that it spread across Europe. His story shows how teaching a practical skill well can matter as much as discovering it.Read story →
Data & AIP. C. Mahalanobis: the physicist who taught India to count itself
P. C. Mahalanobis · Statistician, founder of the Indian Statistical InstitutePrasanta Chandra Mahalanobis trained as a physicist at Cambridge, found statistics almost by accident in a college library, and went on to found the Indian Statistical Institute in a single room in Calcutta. His sample surveys showed that a country could learn reliable facts about itself without counting every person, and his work fed directly into India's planning after independence.Read story →
Design & CreativeR. K. Laxman: the Common Man and a cartoon for every morning
R. K. Laxman · Cartoonist, creator of the Common Man in The Times of IndiaR. K. Laxman began sketching as a small child in Mysore, was turned down by the art school he wanted to join, and went on to draw a daily cartoon on the front page of The Times of India for about five decades. His silent, bespectacled Common Man became one of the best-known drawings in India. His story is a lesson in what drawing every day, for years, can build.Read story →
Design & CreativeRaghu Rai: the engineer who spent sixty years photographing India
Raghu Rai · Photojournalist, Magnum Photos photographer and Padma Shri awardeeRaghu Rai trained as a civil engineer and picked up a camera in his twenties. Over the next six decades he photographed wars, disasters, leaders and ordinary streets, worked for The Statesman and India Today, and was nominated to Magnum Photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson. His story is a lesson for any photography learner in staying with a subject for years and photographing people from up close.Read story →
Data & AIRaj Reddy: the boy from Katoor who taught computers to listen
Raj Reddy · AI and speech recognition pioneer, 1994 Turing Award laureateWhen you speak to your phone and it types your words, you are using ideas that Raj Reddy and his students worked out decades ago. Born in a village in Andhra Pradesh, he studied civil engineering in Madras, met his first computer in Australia, and turned a Stanford class project into a lifetime of work on speech recognition. In 1994 he shared the Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of computing. His story shows how one curious question can grow into a whole field.Read story →
Design & CreativeRaja Ravi Varma: the painter who put art into every Indian home
Raja Ravi Varma · Painter of Indian epics and founder of the Ravi Varma printing pressRaja Ravi Varma grew up in a small estate in Kerala, drew on the walls of his family home as a boy, and taught himself to paint in oils when nobody would show him how. He used that skill to paint scenes from the Indian epics and the women of his time in a new, lifelike style. Then he did something few painters of his day thought of: he started a printing press so that ordinary families could hang his pictures at home.Read story →
Design & CreativeRam Mohan: the animator who trained a generation
Ram Mohan · Animator, often called the father of Indian animationRam Mohan began drawing cartoons for the government's Films Division in 1956, long before India had large animation studios. Over the decades that followed he made animated songs and title sequences for famous filmmakers, built his own studio, co-directed the animated feature Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, and personally trained many of the people who lead Indian animation today. He is widely remembered as the father of Indian animation, and his story shows how patient craft and generous teaching can help build a whole industry.Read story →
Language & CommunicationRuskin Bond: the teenager who wrote a novel and never stopped
Ruskin Bond · Author of The Room on the Roof and more than 500 short stories and essaysRuskin Bond started writing his first novel when he was seventeen, far from home in England. That book, The Room on the Roof, won a literary prize, and its author went on to write hundreds of short stories, essays and novellas and dozens of books for children, most of them from a small town in the hills. His story shows what a steady writing habit and plain, honest words can do over a lifetime.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentSanjeev Kapoor: the hotel chef who made home cooking feel easy
Sanjeev Kapoor · Chef and host of the television cookery show Khana KhazanaSanjeev Kapoor did not plan to become a chef. A boy from Ambala who grew up watching his parents cook at home, he studied hotel management, chose the kitchen when others chose the front desk, and became the executive chef of a large Mumbai hotel at twenty-seven. Then a television cookery show turned him into a familiar face in Indian homes, because he made hotel-style dishes simple enough for anyone to try.Read story →
Design & CreativeSatyajit Ray: the ad agency designer who became a great filmmaker
Satyajit Ray · Filmmaker, illustrator and typeface designer from KolkataSatyajit Ray is remembered around the world as one of the great film directors. Fewer people know that before he made a single film, he spent about thirteen years as a commercial artist at an advertising agency in Kolkata, designing advertisements, book covers and lettering. That design work trained his eye, introduced him to the story of his first film, and stayed with him in every poster and title card he later made.Read story →
Business & ProductivityVerghese Kurien: the engineer who built India's milk supply chain
Verghese Kurien · Father of the White Revolution and first chairman of NDDBA glass of milk in a big Indian city often begins with a farmer in a village, and getting it from one to the other, fresh and at a fair price, is a supply chain problem. Verghese Kurien spent his life solving it. Sent to the small town of Anand on a government bond, he stayed for decades, helped build Amul and led Operation Flood, which linked village cooperatives to towns and cities across India.Read story →
Money & FinanceWarren Buffett: the reader who learned investing from a book and its author
Warren Buffett · Long-time chairman and CEO of Berkshire HathawayWarren Buffett is often described as one of the most successful investors in history, but his story begins with something any learner can do: reading a book carefully. A young man from Omaha read Benjamin Graham, then went to study under Graham himself. What he learned about understanding a business, waiting patiently and staying away from heavy borrowing shaped a career of more than seventy years.Read story →
StudyA. P. J. Abdul Kalam: from Rameswaram to rockets and Rashtrapati Bhavan
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam · Aerospace scientist and 11th President of IndiaA. P. J. Abdul Kalam was born in 1931 in the temple town of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. He studied physics, then aeronautical engineering, and spent four decades building rockets and missiles for India before becoming its President in 2002. His life is the clearest proof that a science student from a small town can change a nation.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentA. R. Rahman: from session keyboard player to two Oscars
A. R. Rahman · Composer, music producer and keyboard playerA. R. Rahman lost his father when he was nine, and his family got by renting out his father's music equipment. As a boy he took a job as a keyboard player for a token fee of 50 rupees. About ten years of session work, then advertising jingles and his own home studio, led to his first film score, Roja, and later to two Academy Awards.Read story →
StudyAditya Puri: the chartered accountant who built HDFC Bank
Aditya Puri · Chartered accountant and founding managing director of HDFC BankAditya Puri grew up in Punjab, studied commerce at Panjab University and qualified as a chartered accountant. After years abroad with Citibank, he came home in 1994 to run a bank that did not yet exist. He led HDFC Bank for twenty-six years, longer than anyone has led a private bank in India, and turned a start-up into one of the country's most valuable lenders.Read story →
StudyArundhati Bhattacharya: from a bank PO exam to the top of SBI
Arundhati Bhattacharya · First woman chairman of the State Bank of IndiaArundhati Bhattacharya grew up in the steel towns of Bhilai and Bokaro and studied English literature in Kolkata. A friend happened to tell her about the bank probationary officers' exam. She cleared it, joined the State Bank of India in 1977 and, thirty-six years later, became the first woman to chair the bank. Her story begins with the same exam thousands of students sit every year.Read story →
Money & FinanceBharat Goenka: the one computer that became Tally
Bharat Goenka · Co-founder of Tally Solutions and Padma Shri awardeeIn 1986 a fire destroyed the Goenka family's cotton business in Bengaluru. The one thing saved was a computer. Bharat Goenka, then in his twenties, used it to write an accounting program for his father, and that program became Tally, the software that most small businesses in India run their books on. His story is about building a tool so simple that the shopkeeper, not the programmer, is in charge.Read story →
Business & ProductivityDan Bricklin: the MBA student who invented the spreadsheet
Dan Bricklin · Co-creator of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheetEvery time you change one cell in Excel and watch the totals update, you are using an idea Dan Bricklin had as a business school student in 1978. With his friend Bob Frankston he turned a daydream about a calculator into VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, and gave people a reason to buy a personal computer. His story shows how a tool for boring rework can change the world.Read story →
StudyDevi Shetty: the surgeon who made heart operations affordable
Devi Shetty · Cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana HealthDevi Shetty was a schoolboy in Mangalore when he heard that a surgeon in South Africa had transplanted a human heart. He decided then that he would become a heart surgeon. He trained at Kasturba Medical College and in England, performed thousands of operations, and built Narayana Health, a hospital chain known around the world for low-cost cardiac care. His story starts with a decision a NEET aspirant can understand.Read story →
Business & ProductivityDhirubhai Ambani: from a petrol station job to Reliance
Dhirubhai Ambani · Founder of Reliance IndustriesDhirubhai Ambani was the son of a village school teacher in Gujarat. He started work as a petrol station attendant abroad, came back to Mumbai with small savings, and opened a trading office in a single small room. By the time he died in 2002, the business he founded, Reliance, had become one of India's largest companies.Read story →
TechnologyGuido van Rossum: the side project that became Python
Guido van Rossum · Creator of the Python programming languageGuido van Rossum was a young programmer at a Dutch research institute when he started writing a new language on the side. Nobody had asked for it and no budget paid for it. He named it after a comedy show and released it in 1991. Today Python runs websites, banks, science labs and machine learning systems, and it is the first language many people learn. His story is about learning from a project that did not succeed.Read story →
StudyIndra Nooyi: from IIM Calcutta to the top of PepsiCo
Indra Nooyi · Former chairman and CEO of PepsiCoIndra Nooyi grew up in Madras, studied science at Madras Christian College and then took a management degree at IIM Calcutta. She began as a product manager in India, went to Yale for a second master's degree, and spent years in consulting and corporate strategy. In 2006 she became chief executive of PepsiCo, one of the world's largest food and drink companies, and led it for twelve years.Read story →
StudyKalpana Chawla: from a school in Karnal to space
Kalpana Chawla · Aerospace engineer and NASA astronautKalpana Chawla finished school in Karnal, Haryana, in 1976. Two decades later she flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first woman of Indian descent to go to space. Her path ran through engineering college, years of research and a long list of pilot licences, one step at a time.Read story →
StudyKumar Mangalam Birla: a chartered accountant at the head of a group
Kumar Mangalam Birla · Chartered accountant and chairman of the Aditya Birla GroupKumar Mangalam Birla was born into one of India's oldest business families, but he did not skip the hard qualifications. He became a chartered accountant and took an MBA in London. In 1995, when his father died suddenly, he became chairman of the Aditya Birla Group at the age of 28. He has led it ever since, and he also wrote India's first corporate governance code for SEBI.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentLata Mangeshkar: a voice built on practice
Lata Mangeshkar · Playback singer, Bharat Ratna awardeeLata Mangeshkar first learnt music by quietly listening to her father teach his students. At 13 she lost him and had to support her family, and her voice was called too thin by people who could have hired her. She kept learning, kept working long studio days, and became one of the most loved voices India has ever heard.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentMary Kom: from Manipur's fields to six world boxing titles
M. C. Mary Kom · Six-time world champion boxer and Olympic medallistMary Kom grew up helping her father in the fields of a village in Manipur. She took up boxing in 2000 and went on to win six world titles and an Olympic bronze medal. Her story shows what years of steady training, smart recovery and a strong will can do.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentMithali Raj: the sleepy girl who led Indian cricket for years
Mithali Raj · Former captain of the India women's cricket teamMithali Raj started cricket because her father wanted to cure her habit of sleeping late. That early routine grew into an international career of 23 years, more than 10,000 runs and two World Cup finals as India's captain. Her story is less about talent alone and more about showing up, again and again, for a very long time.Read story →
TechnologyN. R. Narayana Murthy: from Rs 10,000 to building Infosys
N. R. Narayana Murthy · Software engineer and co-founder of InfosysN. R. Narayana Murthy grew up in a middle-class family in Karnataka and studied at a government school. In 1981 he and six colleagues started Infosys with Rs 10,000. His story is about engineering skill, patience through hard years, and a firm belief that how you earn matters as much as what you earn.Read story →- Study
Nandan Nilekani: the IIT engineer who built Infosys and Aadhaar
Nandan Nilekani · Co-founder of Infosys and first chairman of UIDAINandan Nilekani studied electrical engineering at IIT Bombay, co-founded Infosys in 1981 and led it as chief executive from 2002 to 2007. Then he left to build Aadhaar, the identity number system for every resident of India. His path shows what an engineering education can do when it is pointed at problems that matter.Read story → 
Personal DevelopmentRatan Tata: from the steel shop floor to leading the Tata Group
Ratan Tata · Industrialist, former chairman of Tata Sons and philanthropistRatan Tata was born into one of India's best-known business families, yet he began his career working on the shop floor of a steel plant in Jamshedpur. He went on to lead the Tata Group from 1991 to 2012 and took it onto the world stage. He was remembered for his humility, his care for people and his quiet way of leading.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentShakuntala Devi: the girl from Bangalore who made numbers fun
Shakuntala Devi · Mental calculator and author, known as the 'human computer'Shakuntala Devi had almost no formal schooling, yet she became famous around the world for working out huge calculations in her head. Her gift was first noticed over a game of cards with her father. She spent her life performing, writing puzzle books and showing people that numbers can be a source of joy.Read story →- Language & Communication
Sudha Murty: an engineer who writes simple stories
Sudha Murty · Author, engineer and philanthropistSudha Murty studied in a Kannada-medium school, struggled with English in engineering college, and wrote her first English book only after she turned 50. Today her books, written in plain and simple language, are read in homes and schools across India. Her journey shows that clear writing is a skill you can start building at any age.Read story → 
TechnologySundar Pichai: from a Chennai flat to leading Google
Sundar Pichai · CEO of Google and AlphabetSundar Pichai's family got their first telephone when he was about ten, and he did not have regular access to a computer until he went to the United States for his master's. He studied metallurgy, not computer science. Curiosity, hard work and an open mind took him from a two-room flat in Chennai to the top job at Google.Read story →
StudyT. N. Manoharan: the chartered accountant India trusted in a crisis
T. N. Manoharan · Chartered accountant, former ICAI president and Padma Shri awardeeT. N. Manoharan came from a small town in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu, qualified as a chartered accountant in 1983 and went on to lead the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. When the Satyam scandal broke in 2009, the government put him on the board that saved the company. His story shows what a CA with integrity can do for a whole country.Read story →
StudyT. N. Seshan: the IAS officer who made India's elections fair
T. N. Seshan · IAS officer and 10th Chief Election Commissioner of IndiaT. N. Seshan came from a village in Palakkad, studied physics, topped the civil services examination and joined the IAS in 1955. Thirty-five years later, as Chief Election Commissioner, he used powers that had always existed in the Constitution to make political parties follow the rules. For a UPSC aspirant his story is a lesson in what one officer who knows the law can do.Read story →
Personal DevelopmentViswanathan Anand: from a Chennai chess club to world champion
Viswanathan Anand · Chess grandmaster and five-time world championViswanathan Anand learned chess from his mother at the age of six and solved puzzles from a TV show with her as a boy. He went on to become India's first grandmaster and a five-time world champion. His journey shows how daily practice, curiosity and an open mind can carry you very far.Read story →