From Kolkata to Cupertino, this 21-year-old Indian developer is making waves with Apple

India Today

20-05-2025

Jaagrav Seal, a 21-year-old third-year computer science and engineering student from Kolkata, is not a technology enthusiast in the typical sense. He is interested in tech, yes. He sees the good side. But he can point out the gaping holes in it, just as easily. More importantly, he wants to bring changes, some of which might eventually fill in those gaps and make the world a better place. Age is just a number, they say. His story adds credence to what others might write off, simply as big talk. Then, when such a talent is appreciated – which is equally important and harder to achieve – you know, the stars have aligned for the greater good.advertisementJaagrav is a two-time recipient of Apple's prestigious Swift Student Challenge. The feat is rare because, 1) it's a global competition, and b.) that competition is tough. But if you do manage to stand out and win, you get great exposure and – this is the most important part – an opportunity to learn and hone your craft straight from people making cool tech like iPhone, iPad, and Mac. As the tech world gears up for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2025, we sat down with Jaagrav to understand what drives someone to start coding at 13 and then go on to build apps for the betterment of society.Speaking with Jaagrav, his passion for technology is immediately evident. This year, his winning entry is "Prescribe It," an app that identifies a pertinent real-world problem and tries to offer a solution that is both elegant and user-friendly. "Prescribe It is an app that focuses on both doctors and patients. Doctors can create prescriptions directly from this app and share it with their patients. Once the patient receives it on their end, they can easily set reminders for each medicine that they have got in their prescription,' Jaagrav explains.advertisement
The inspiration behind it is deeply personal. Jaagrav recounts a challenging period for his family. "Last year, my father had bypass surgery. Post surgery, he had around 20 medicines that he needed to take every single day and that's when it became a very huge challenge for me and my family to track all his medicines that he needed to take every day. We ended up using a whiteboard instead of any of the existing apps and solutions on the App Store.'His voice carries empathy as he describes the difficulties they faced. 'I wish that the app that I built was already there last year because it helps: from a doctor's perspective, it helps them with creating prescriptions, while from the patient's perspective, it helps them with setting reminders without any hassle. All they need to do is just press one button, and they can set reminders for each of the medications that they've got on their prescription."From Scratch to SwiftHis journey into the world of coding began humbly, with a tool many budding programmers are familiar with. 'I started as a Scratch developer," he shares. "Scratch is a tool that teaches children how to code, and it really helped me because it helps with building logical skills. Especially if you are exposed to that as a kid, it will help you to think in a very granular way. When you are programming something, when you're building something all by yourself, every step counts, so if you can get that knowledge, get that skill, as a kid, it becomes very useful."advertisementFrom the visual block-based world of Scratch, Jaagrav's curiosity led him to more complex languages. "Then, eventually, I moved on to coding in Java when I was in class seven or eight. I found my seniors in class ten or class twelve, used to learn Java, and I was really intrigued by the code editor. I didn't even care about what language they used, I was more into the code editor that they were using, which looked really cool. So, eventually I borrowed a book from the school library [about it]. That's how my actual coding journey began.'His initial ambition was mobile app development, though his path meandered slightly. "My goal was to eventually build apps for the mobile. But then I ended up getting into web development, and it was just last year that I finally came back to iOS app development."advertisementHere's where Apple's Swift Student Challenge enters the narrative as a significant catalyst. "With Swift Student Challenge, you get encouraged a lot, even as a completely new iOS app developer. It helps you a lot to quickly get started with app development in iOS specifically."Hard choicesJaagrav touches upon a common perception amongst aspiring developers. "I think for most other people of my age, iOS app development seems quite challenging. But when you try out something like SwiftUI, you realise that, ok, wait a minute, it's much easier than say even web development at some points. That's the reason why I got interested in SwiftUI and a bunch of its other frameworks."His first foray into the Swift Student Challenge resulted in another winning app, "Graphic." :Last year, I made this app called Graphic. I didn't expect that the app would win because it was an app that would only help me and a few people of my age, where people might find it difficult to explain their code. To explain your code, you would normally make flow charts and diagrams and that's where Graphic comes in. It would help engineers and students to create graphical representations or visuals of whatever algorithm or whatever code they were writing."advertisementBuilding on his success, Jaagrav continued to explore the iOS ecosystem. "After that, I continued my journey in iOS development. I developed a few other apps for a few companies and eventually, earlier this year, I made Prescribe It. The app didn't take more than two weeks to develop thanks to how easy it is to code with Swift UI. I used something called the multiplier connectivity framework that iOS offers."He then delves into the technical ingenuity behind Prescribe It, highlighting a key feature that makes it particularly useful in diverse settings. "Now, how does a doctor share their prescription with the patient completely offline? That's where this multiplier connectivity framework helped a lot. So, using that technology that is exclusive to iOS, it helped me to share prescriptions from the doctor's phone to the patient's phone where on the patient's phone, the patient could easily set the reminders for multiple medicines just by clicking on a single button. On top of that, the patient also gets a prescription PDF that they can use to buy medicines from shops. There are a few other features that would help the patient to easily contact the doctor in a state of emergency."advertisementCoding at 13Reflecting on his early exposure to coding, Jaagrav credits an inspiring figure from his school. "It happened at school. There was a senior intern in our school who would help our teachers with documenting Excel workbooks. He would bring a Raspberry Pie to school and make some cool projects. He made this app that could look at different kinds of objects and tell, this is a chair, this is a human being or, this is a cat, so on and so forth. During that time, I got a lot of exposure to real coding (Scratch is something that I completely picked up by myself from the internet). Me and a couple of my other school friends got really interested in this kind of coding or, basically, in this domain. Later, I got into web development and eventually decided that I wanted to also get into app development."His foray into the health tech space, culminating in Prescribe It and a recent portable ECG machine project, stems from a growing interest in the intersection of technology and healthcare, amplified by his father's experience."Health tech was something I was already interested in because biotechnology is quite an interesting topic. There are bio-amp sensors or bio-amplifiers that can read into your electrical activity that happens inside your body: that's where my interest in health tech began. Now, the reason why I got exposed to that was because of my father's surgery, because the surgeon who operated on him told me about this robot called da Vinci Xi. It's a surgical robot. The amount of precision, engineering and resilience that has gone behind developing something as amazing as that robot is quite impressive because that robot has been in research and development for the last 20–25 years. This surgeon visited Germany in 1999 when I was not even born and, during that time, he had some negative feedback about that robot. From that time till 2015, that robot had been in constant development and finally in 2015, I think that robot performed its first few surgeries. What was so mind-blowing for me was that this company just didn't give up, and they just kept going."This anecdote highlights Jaagrav's appreciation for perseverance and innovation. He is equally vocal about the disparities in technological adoption across different sectors."In the health tech space, you will see that a lot of the technology that is still being used is quite obsolete. If you see in fintech, we've got UPI, which is amazing, you can make payments in a few seconds. And if you see in automobiles, there's also such an amazing amount of development, but if you see in health tech specifically, if you see how hospitals manage their own staff, how hospitals manage their own beds, you will see they are still using old operating systems and some old software that is being built by these legacy companies. These companies are very old and have unfriendly user interfaces which doctors don't really like. That's where I think a lot of development is still needed. A lot of research is still needed so that doctors are encouraged to use these kinds of apps and that's the reason why I sort of got into health tech."To ensure his solutions are truly impactful, Jaagrav actively seeks feedback from those who would use them. Recently, he participated in a hackathon."Last week, my friends and I participated in a hackathon where we made a portable ECG machine. It can record your ECG, and it will get it on the phone that you are using, and that way you can easily monitor your ECG and monitor any abnormalities that might show up in your ECG. If someone has atrial fibrillation, it will immediately notify you. In my father's experience when he had AFIB, he didn't even realise that he was having AFIB. Luckily, he was connected to an ECG machine that showed his heart rate going abnormally high."Breaking the stereotypeJaagrav also touches upon the perceived barriers to entry in iOS development and how Apple's tools are helping to break those stereotypes."iOS development is not possible on other operating systems. So, people who are, let's say, interested in iOS app development as well, are unable to create apps on their Windows machines. Once these people get their own MacBooks and get into macOS by themselves, things change. What I've noticed is most developers tend to stick with what they've already learned so far, as I come from a web development background, so I could have chosen to stick with web development even after having such a capable device [Mac]. If you want to learn SwiftUI, it's a completely new language, it's a completely new syntax. Basically, what people are afraid of is not the language, but they're afraid of the learning curve, and that's what I think stops most people from learning something like iOS app development. And that's the same reason why many people may not also get into Android development in the first place, because they might find it too difficult in the beginning until they actually try it."He shares his own experience of overcoming this initial hesitation. "I tried out Swift UI for one app. My first app was called Codex, which would let you execute programming languages in Java, Python, C++ Node.js, whatever language it is you want to run your code in, you could basically run all that code directly on your smartphone. Now there are many apps like this that already exist out there on the market. What I built initially was an API that would help with executing the code. The only reason why I wanted to make this app was to demo my API, and that's how I got into SwiftUI. It was not for building a proper iOS app, it was not for building some new product. It was for building a proper demo for my own API and that's when I found out that, ok, wait a second, Swift UI is much easier than people think it is. Just because most people tell you that iOS app development is difficult and Android app development is difficult, you, as a newbie or a new learner, will get discouraged from trying out these technologies. That's what happened to me as well. I could have started learning Swift in 2019."Looking ahead to WWDC 2025, Jaagrav is excited, both as a developer and a user."As a developer, I want to see the kinds of SDKs and development kits that Apple builds for developers that would allow us to use the capabilities of LLMs or maybe on-device LLMs. Currently, everyone is connecting their app with an API like OpenAI, Claude or some other and making an entire product out of it. What I am more interested in is, how Apple executes this entire problem. I am quite surprised by how Apple executes the solution to a problem. Also, I am excited about all the exclusive frameworks that iOS has that come with the tech that Apple develops. That's what I'm excited about as a developer. As a user, I'm quite excited about visionOS specifically because I think eventually, that's quite an exciting future to be in to have your entire interface right in front of you, and you don't really need to carry your phone or laptop, you should be able to interact with your devices directly from this headset that you have."