You can count on Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, ‘the world’s fastest human calculator’

Twenty-one-year-old Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, known as ‘the world’s fastest human calculator’, talks about his love for numbers and his ed-tech startup Exploring Infinities

Does the very mention of mathematics give you jitters? Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash blames the made-to-fit-all-size syllabus of Indian schools for this fear. He should know, considering he won the International maths Olympiad 2020. Bhanu is known as ‘the world’s fastest human calculator’ as he beat the record of Shakuntala Devi (the record of adding a two digit number to itself as many times as possible in 15 seconds), but avers that speed is not the only criteria to appreciate numbers. The 21-year-old maths wizard who hails from Andhra Pradesh, holds four world records, 50 Limca Records for his skill in solving complex mathematics problems at top speeds. He has been dubbed the ‘Usain Bolt of mathematics’ by BBC after the Olympic Gold Medal at the Mind Sports Olympics 2020, United Kingdom. So it is natural that he has several high-paying job offers from multinational companies and leading political parties. However, such offers fail to lure or impress him. Bhanu’s goal is to erase maths phobia and make more people understand and analyse numbers. Towards this end, he started Exploring Infinities, a maths education with a vision to make students apply maths in real life and not just to improve grades. Exploring Infinities focuses on making maths fun and multidisciplinary, and engages students through online classes and games. Bhanu feels a proper understanding maths can make a student do well in any subject or profession one chooses.