The IAS topper Gaurav Agarwal, a man from the Pink City of India is well known for cracking the most covetable exams in India. The life of Gaurav Agarwal is full of ups and downs. He had a very hard time getting a degree from IIT Kanpur as he failed many subjects. In the final semester, he failed another subject that got his degree extended by a semester. He used to stay back on vacations for clearing the backlog and paid regular visits to the professor’s accommodations seeking leniency. However, this made him learn resilience and made him the IAS topper who failed in his graduation exam.
Gaurav’s Early Education
IAS Gaurav Agarwal cleared the toughest Engineering exam at the age of 16 and bagged AIR 45 in IIT JEE-2001. He graduated from the IIT Kanpur in the year 2005 in Computer Science engineering. However, Gaurav Agarwal failed in IIT Kanpur and his degree extended for another semester.
However, the failure did not block his way to climb the mountains. After this initial failure, he bounced back and cleared the toughest MBA exam in India at the age of 21 and scored 99.94 in CAT 2005, joined the most academically rigorous MBA College, graduated with flying colours in the year 2008, and begged a gold medal for academic excellence.
Also, worked for 40 months for Citigroup as an Investment Banker.
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Gaurav’s Journey To UPSC
Gaurav Agarwal left the well-paid job to serve the people of India and he appeared for an exam in which the success rate is almost 0.4% and also known as one of the toughest exams in the world. When everyone in his family was busy in his wedding preparation, Gaurav Agarwal was busy with his books and learning strategy and appeared for the personal interview just four days before his wedding.
Later on, the UPSC declared the results and Gaurav Agarwal topped the UPSC 2013 and became the first person from the Royal State to bag the first rank in Civil Services Examination. Gaurav Agarwal’s UPSC Rank was AIR 1 in 2013.
Gaurav Agarwal’s Posting And Work As An IAS Officer
Currently, Gaurav is working as a CEO Zila Parishad, Karauli Rajasthan. He is a technology enthusiast and stills follow his passion for finance. Where everyone in the world is looking forward to using Artificial intelligence to improve their productivity and efficiency, but he is finding ways to utilize AI in public policies. Therefore, backward people can avail of the maximum benefits of advanced technology.
Gaurav Agarwal worked on various technological projects to improve the life of the last mile, poor and marginalized people. When the farmer’s distress is continuously rising in India, Gaurav Agarwal is trying to improve the lives of the farmers by using technology.
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Gaurav Agarwal’s Current Projects
- One of his project Machine Learning for Agriculture Extension: Developing Agri Chatbots. The central objective of the project is to use machine learning to reach out to millions of farmers in India in the backdrop of fast penetrating cheap data and smartphones.
- To provide the real-time alerts to the farmers Gaurav Agarwal worked on a project Business Analysis for Kisan Call Centers and leveraged the knowledge gained during his previous stints. The project uses data analytics over millions of call records to derive meaningful, real-time alerts regarding agriculture distress in any part of India so that timely administrative interventions may be made and distress alleviated.
Gaurav Agarwal Notes and Blog
In order to help UPSC candidates, so that they could get his notes online and prepare themselves, Gaurav Agarwal started blogging in 2013 as “Khelo India” where he provided preparation tips, strategies, GS papers notes for UPSC mains. Gaurav Agarwal’s notes are very famous among aspirants and his blog enjoys a lot of traffic.
Conclusion
There are a few success mantras that Gaurav uses and advocates. He said that success and failure are part of life. When you fail, you should not let it dishearten you. Failure should be taken as learnings and one should use them to improve oneself. Also, we should have the courage to admit our mistakes and accept our weaknesses. Have faith in your abilities. Be optimistic, only hope will allow you to make the efforts to change the system.
Do not compete with others, compete with yourself, and always try to improve yourself by improving your weakness. Do not chase the target. Enjoy the journey without worrying about the targets. He is a true role model for aspirants.
