How A 26-Year-Old Indian Who Never Went To College Made An App Bought By WordPress For ₹416 Cr

Kishan Bagaria’s tale is proof that one does not necessarily need a college degree to succeed in life. Armed with the internet and morbid curiosity, Bagaira went on to invent the app texts. com which was bought by WordPress for $50 million (around ₹416 crore).

What to know: Hailing from Dibrugarh, Assam where he did his schooling, Kishan learned about coding through the internet. From the age of 12, Kishan has been developing Windows apps.

Kishan started working on texts. com in 2020. Texts is an app where a user can see all of their messages from messaging apps such as Instagram, Whatsapp, Telegram and Twitter in a single dashboard. Through the app, the users can also see the messages without letting the sender know. The app also has end-to-end encryption ensuring security.

The prototype was well received by his friends and the app became popular through word of mouth. As the app became famous, Kishan was approached by many experts from the industry for the app.

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and Automattic met Ishan in 2023 and after 3 months of discussion, the deal was finalised in October and Automattic acquired texts.com. Mullenweg called Kishan a “Generational tech genius”.

Currently, Kishan heads the text.com team and is expanding the platform with the backing of Automattic in the US.