He had no mobile or internet and then Karnataka techie’s Rs 900 cr startup won NASA funding

Born in Aldur, a village in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, about five hours away from Bengaluru, Awais Ahmed neither had access to the internet nor a smartphone until he was in eighth grade. The result? He ended up spending most of his time reading encyclopedias on space, science and technology — a habit that ultimately laid the foundation for his never-ending pursuit of interstellar marvels and a village-to-metro cities arc.