For 28-year-old Balachandar Karthikeyan, blazing a trail comes naturally, as it’s been a defining aspect of his career. As the only Indian member to work on both the WhatsApp and Signal teams, Balachandar’s career has been brought to more impressive heights as he’s been defined as a groundbreaking force in the tech world.
Completely self-taught as a tech professional, Balachandar obtained his position after informing the WhatsApp team of a discovery he made in the app. “It was a security flaw I had stumbled upon. I didn’t think anything would necessarily come of it, but here we are,” Balachandar says with a laugh. The young rising tech powerhouse had already dropped out of college, yet he was eschewed from the standard interview process and offered a chance to work with a co-founder of WhatsApp and Signal, Brian Acton, directly.
Brian Acton has spoken about Balachandar and his impressive work. “I have a very, very good friend and colleague who lives in Erode, in Tamil Nadu, and I talk to him every day. He’s telling me what’s going on. It helps me understand sort of what the Indian market is like. What’s necessary. He’s giving me product ideas; I think that’s the best way to build a product for India, and what’s really awesome is India is such a strong representation of the world that if you build for India, you build for the world,” Acton is quoted.
Having developed an enthusiasm and later a proficiency for tech, Balachandar was introduced to programming at a young age. “I began to develop this ambition with it. I was deadset on making a big impact in the industry; I just didn’t know how I’d do it,” Balachandar says.
Attending university to pursue a degree, Balachandar was considered a “problem” student, with low grades and teachers requesting that Balachandar’s parents discontinue his education. Balachandar found that as the educational system is focused on metrics and not a real-world application of his skills, he dropped out to pursue his self-education full-time.
“I had taken a lot of novel concepts and improved WhatsApp with a variety of features in my time working with the company,” Balachandar says. “Status messages, groups, video calls, on-platform payments, these are just a few of the concepts I had contributed to the app.” Balachandar also took a strong role in quality assurance for the app, given his proficiency in picking up coding flaws.
Brian Acton later left WhatsApp to found Signal, and Balachandar followed to contribute to the platform. As WhatsApp has waned in popularity with changing privacy policies, Signal has grown considerably in popularity. Balachandar has since founded Bringar Research & Development Pvt. Ltd. in India and Bringar Apps LLC. in Dubai. Additionally, he developed the app WhatsAuto-Reply, which has been adopted by over 25 million businesses worldwide. With a US-launched product from companies based in two separate countries, Balachandar conducts business internationally.
“One thing I was proud of with WhatsAuto-Reply is that we did it independently. No outside investors, no backseat drivers. We were in complete control of our product, and we made something we’re all insanely proud of,” Balachandar says. “To me, entrepreneurship is not just about making money, but about finding and pursuing one’s passion, serving others, and making the world a better place.”To learn more, connect with Balachandar on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/balachandar-karthikeyan-096b3663/
