Award-winning Singapore poly graduate is aspiring tech entrepreneur coding for social good

Straits Times

13-05-2025

Mr Jeyakumar Sriram was awarded the Lee Kuan Yew Award and OCBC Prize for academic excellence, leadership and contributions to the institution. PHOTO: SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC
Award-winning Singapore poly graduate is aspiring tech entrepreneur coding for social good The TL;DR: Singapore Polytechnic graduate Jeyakumar Sriram had no coding experience before joining the polytechnic. Today, the 19-year-old aspiring tech entrepreneur has participated in multiple hackathons that have won him seed funding for his innovations.
When Jeyakumar Sriram was figuring out his next steps after secondary school, he decided to follow his heart.
Against the advice of his relatives, who felt that he should attend junior college with his stellar O-level grades, and despite having no coding experience, Mr Sriram decided to pursue applied artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics at Singapore Polytechnic (SP).
'My family (felt) that spending three years at polytechnic (rather than two at junior college) was a big commitment that might not be worth it, especially given that I wasn't set on a career path yet,' said Mr Sriram, who scored seven A1s for his O-level examinations and graduated as the top student of his alma mater Yuan Ching Secondary School.
'But I had always looked up to entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, and I felt that technologies like AI had a bright future, so I decided to take a leap of faith.'
Today, the 19-year-old is not only a confident coder, but also a multi-time hackathon finalist whose innovations for social change have won him funding and support from organisations such as Open Government Products and the Ministry of Defence (Mindef).
He was one of more than 5,000 students who graduated from SP from May 2 to 8. He was awarded the Lee Kuan Yew Award, which is presented to four outstanding course gold medallists from the technology or computer-related courses in SP; and the OCBC Prize, which recognises Lee Kuan Yew institutional medallists for their academic excellence, leadership and contributions to the institution and beyond.
Mr Sriram's first big break came during Build for Good 2024 , a month-long hackathon organised by Open Government Products, which called on participants to address public-good problems using technological solutions.
During the hackathon, Mr Sriram and two other team members developed Ho Seh Bo?, an app designed to assist volunteers at active ageing centres in their outreach and visitations of vulnerable seniors by digitising record-keeping and providing an AI assistant that gives personalised advice for engaging each senior based on records kept on the app.
Mr Sriram said: 'There are a lot of broader issues like sustainability, for example, that many people are already trying to solve or that can't be solved because of external issues.
'By focusing on something more niche, I feel like I can have a bigger impact on the people I'm helping.'
Mr Sriram and his team were finalists in Build for Good 2024, and won $5,000 of seed funding for their mobile app.
Ho Seh Bo? has been adopted by two active ageing centres in their day-to-day operations. It generates revenue by charging the centres for subscriptions to its services, which are variable based on the size of the organisation.
Mr Sriram said: 'Ho Seh Bo? was never really created with the intention of making profits. Right now, we are using the revenue to sustain our cloud infrastructure and just keep the business going.'
Mr Jeyakumar Sriram (2nd from right) and his team clinched first place at the YouthXHack annual hackathon for their innovation Oculis.
PHOTO: SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC
He has another up-and-coming start-up in the works – Oculis, a mobile app that uses visual information AI to help visually impaired people to navigate.
The prototype of Oculis won first place at the annual YouthXHack 2024 hackathon , which aims to challenge young Singaporean to solve real-life problems.
The mobile app is currently being developed under Mindef's Total Defence Sandbox Initiative, which seeks to support initiatives that put Total Defence into action, and Mr Sriram plans to commence user testing for it by the end of May.
After graduation, Mr Sriram is planning to study computer science at the National University of Singapore after completing his national service. He hopes to continue working on new innovations and start-ups in hopes of becoming a full-time entrepreneur.
Asked about his biggest takeaway from his time in polytechnic, Mr Sriram said: 'It's important to have the courage to try new things. If you told me before polytechnic that I'd be a start-up founder and entrepreneur, I'd have called you crazy.
'I think you never know what you can do unless you try it.'
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