Big Brainers

In April 2020, seeing young kids suddenly impacted with isolation and boredom because of the pandemic, I created ChessMate, a not-for-profit effort to teach chess virtually. I made use of my newfound time to share my knowledge and donate 100% of the proceeds to the Rotary Foundation. Starting with one lesson, the initiative grabbed attention and rapidly turned into 10 hours of weekly commitment with a waitlist of over 50 students by May. Given the high demand for ChessMate lessons and my desire to expand the impact, I shared the idea with two friends, keen to take this humanitarian project further.

In June 2020, we launched Big Brainers, now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Since then, I’ve been honored to lead what started as simple chess lessons into an entrepreneurial venture. Today, we continue to be on an expanded mission to deliver lessons to younger kids in math, coding, art, and several more subjects, raise and donate money to humanitarian causes, and provide an awesome virtual volunteering platform to other students like us amid the pandemic. With 2000+ hours of lessons delivered to 300+ students globally, we’ve raised over $30,000 with an internationally distributed team of 70+ student volunteers. Our impact has reached the many corners of the world by feeding hungry kids, delivering oxygen and critical resources to COVID patients, educating underprivileged children, saving wildlife environments, and providing clean water and sanitation via UNICEF, the Rotary Foundation, WWF, Water.org, GiveIndia, and UNESCO.

Throughout the Big Brainers journey, there've been several challenges along the way. Some were related to legal processes like getting the organization incorporated, filing for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, and dealing with an alleged patent infringement that turned out to be fake! Others were scaling the organization proportionally with the growth of our volunteer team. I was able to exercise leadership and keep volunteers motivated with a bright vision of what lies ahead for the organization and milestones we kept accomplishing, because of everyone's collaborative effort. I learned a lot about nonprofit legal processes, scaling an entrepreneurial venture, and effectively leading a large team of volunteers. This experience allowed me to develop several IB learner profile traits, including being a better communicator and being more open-minded.