Ritesh Verma

Two years ago, at the end of his third year of engineering, Ritesh Verma was staring at a backlog of 12 subjects, which means he had failed in 12 subjects. Verma, who had moved to Mumbai from Lucknow in 2010, had a keen interest in filmmaking. But, he came to the city to enroll himself into IIT coaching classes. In 2014, he took admission at the Vellore Institute of Engineering (VIT), still with no interest in the subject whatsoever. "I went with the flow, that's what everyone else around me was doing. In less than a year, I regretted it," says Verma. Earlier this year, the 22-year-old won the Los Angeles Film Festival award for his short film Fears, that he submitted in the student-category. He also published his first book of poems, Mystical Emotions, close on the heels of graduating as an engineer.