We must have seen many Facebook posts that feature the world’s famous college dropouts. The list stretches from the Hollywood A listers like James Cameron, Harrison Ford, George Clooney, and Tom Hanks to the Titans of the Inudstry who made it big in the business like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Financial Expert Warren Buffet, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It also includes the likes of sports icons such as Golfer Tiger Woods and Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar as well.

But this post started circulating today became viral within hours. Surpassing all the above records, a 16 year old boy became CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of two companies. If you think that he is an IITian, you are wrong. The lad is a class IX drop out. Interesting, but not impossible.

Here is the letter for you:

“I dropped out of school when I was in the 9th grade, because I didn’t want to rote learn concepts anymore. Ever since I was a child, I would explore my curiosity and make things by watching T.V shows, learning from the engineers at my father's office and following tutorials by Make Magazine. When I was 10, I went up to my dad and said I wanted to build a Hover Craft and instead of ridiculing my idea, he asked me to go for it!

I don’t agree with the grading system and how we fail to think of new ideas as opposed to memorizing theories from a book…only to forget them later. When I dropped out of school, I was home schooled and took 2 board exams that year, which gave me one entire year to create! I had the honor of working with Dr. Ramesh Raskar of MIT, where my team and I developed a bunch of products - a Virtual Brailler that converts any PDF document into Braille. I now run 2 companies which create products that engender curiosity and innovation.

However, I got back to formal schooling in 2014, but I don’t get too bogged down by academics. I'm 16 and I love learning, but I want to continue creating. I want to see a change in India and center most of my school group assignments around empowering rural communities in India. I believe that it's better to promote tourism in India through innovation rather than inviting foreign investments to set up factories here. My passion is to tackle real world problems through empowering technology…and all this does not depend on the grade I get. We need to stop chasing grades, colleges, jobs and focus on making a difference...that’s when change will actually come about.”

- Manohar