A journey through digital worlds, heavy vehicles, school life, and the first steps of building a company.
The world had slowed down. It was the coronavirus lockdown, and I was ten, studying in Class 5. But something new was beginning for me. Watching my uncle, Mr. Balu, a 3D modeller at Infosys in Bengaluru, made me curious about how digital worlds were created.
With his guidance, I began learning Blender. For the next two years, I explored modelling, learning how an idea could become a shape, a scene, and eventually an experience.
By Class 7, I wanted to deepen my creative skills. I joined FGI Academy in Salem to learn 3ds Max and completed the course. What started as curiosity was becoming something I could practise with purpose.
Alongside digital creation, I was drawn to mechanics—especially the systems inside heavy vehicles. I wanted to understand how things worked, whether they existed on a screen or moved on the road. Until Class 7, I studied at Notre Dame of Holy Cross School in Salem. In Class 8, I moved to Holy Cross School, Salem.
In Class 8, I built Chatboot, an AI wrapper, and participated in the district-level “Veetukku Oru Vignani” competition conducted by the Tamil news channel Puthiya Thalaimurai. It was an early opportunity to take something I had made beyond my own screen.
At the same time, Sri Balaji Bus Service in Salem made a strong impression on me. I admired its service and time discipline. I wanted my favourite bus to become everyone’s favourite, so I started the Instagram page sri_balaji_bus_fanz_salem.
I continue to maintain that page. It has grown into a large bus community, and the service has helped me develop my mechanical knowledge. I’m sincerely grateful to Sri Balaji Bus Service for the support it continues to give me.
For Classes 9 and 10, my focus was firmly on my studies. I scored 443 out of 500 in my Class 10 board examinations, including 99 out of 100 in English, which earned me a state second rank in the subject.
Those years taught me that progress is also about sustained attention: showing up, working steadily, and giving an important goal the time it deserves.
During my Class 10 holidays, I started Maestro Nova Digital Marketing with my friends Aditiya Ram and Vetrivel. We visited cafés and restaurants, introduced our services, and worked with a restaurant during April.
We eventually realised that digital marketing wasn’t the right fit for us and stepped away. It was a short venture, but an important lesson in trying, listening, and being willing to change direction.
In May, I began building Ryse X with my team: a creator marketplace where users can buy creator credits, with a market-style buying and selling experience. It remains under development, with approximately 85% of the work complete.
I wanted virtual reality to be accessible to more people. On 25 May 2026, I founded Oculix.
Our first service was the VR Educational Carnival for schools and colleges. The idea was simple: take an educational concept a student finds difficult and let them experience it in virtual reality for around ten minutes. I believe an experience can make a lesson easier to understand—and much harder to forget.
It was the beginning of turning my interest in technology into something that could help other people learn.
When schools reopened in June, I joined Emerald Valley Public School in Salem—a school I had long wished to attend. I chose the PCM group with Multimedia, a subject I had always wanted to study.
For G-Fest, our school’s event held once every two years, I had an idea: recreate the whole school campus in virtual reality. In ten days, I modelled the campus in Blender, simulated it in Unity, and installed the experience on my Meta Quest 3.
I demonstrated the virtual campus to students at G-Fest, which welcomed students from around 25 schools.
On 4 August 2026, I took the EVPS virtual campus tour to SHINKA 2026 at Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology in Chennai. At this state-level innovation expo, the project won first place among around 1,000 students from various districts. Coverage followed in The Times of India, Virtual Times, and Southern Mail.
In September, I planned “AI to ASI: The Next Era of Intelligence”—a workshop with expert speakers to help students understand AI and the ideas behind AGI and ASI. The service is planned to begin in November 2026.
On 26 and 27 September, Oculix sponsored virtual reality at Medverse, a national-level event held in Salem. It was another opportunity to share immersive technology with people directly.
On 1 October, I introduced two Oculix products: VirVerse, for setting up immersive VR labs, and Humatrix, for humanoid robot deployment and maintenance. Humatrix currently focuses on Unitree humanoid robots.
I’m still learning. The questions have become bigger, and so have the things I want to build.
“I wanted my favourite bus to be everyone’s favourite. Later, I wanted the technology I loved to be something everyone could experience.”
Y. P. Rithieishwar
Technology, immersive learning, creative projects, or a shared enthusiasm for buses.