Late at night, with his phone balanced carefully in his hand, Arjun scrolls through lines of code on a small screen. He is building a website on Vedic maths — fixing layouts, testing buttons, and adding new features.
There is no laptop on his desk, no expensive setup, no classroom around him. Just a smartphone, patchy internet, and the determination to build something of his own.
A few years ago, the idea of learning coding without a computer would have sounded impossible. But for students like Arjun, coding now fits inside a phone screen.
Across government schools, ITIs, and polytechnics in India, thousands of students are quietly building websites, AI tools, and software projects entirely through smartphones.
Behind this shift is CodeYogi, an education initiative that began as an online coding bootcamp in 2020 before formally registering as the non-profit CodeYogi Foundation in February 2025.
What started with live coding classes in Uttarakhand’s ITIs and polytechnics has since evolved into a smartphone-first learning platform designed to make tech education accessible to students traditionally excluded from it.
A mobile-first coding platform allows students to write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly on their phones using a browser-based editor.
Today, more than three lakh students across nine states and over 100 districts are part of the ecosystem, with nearly 62,000 students already building tech solutions directly on their phones.
For Prashant Chaudhary, Rakesh Sehgal, and Priyanka Sethi, the idea began with a simple question: what happens to talented students who never get the right opportunities?
Three people, similar journeys, and one shared problem
Prashant often returns to his childhood when explaining why CodeYogi exists.
Growing up in a village in Uttar Pradesh, he says, even his school teachers knew little about IITs or engineering entrances. “I had heard the word engineering, but I had no clue what it really was,” he recalls.
With support from a few people who helped pay his coaching fees, he eventually made it to IIT Delhi — a transition he describes as life-changing. But while his life changed, many childhood friends remained stuck in the same cycle of limited opportunities.
“I just wanted to help those people who were hardworking but didn’t really have guidance,” he says.
After graduating, Prashant worked with startups and software companies while informally helping students learn coding. Slowly, the initiative grew bigger than expected.
In 2020, Prashant and Priyanka moved to Dehradun and committed to building CodeYogi full-time. Their first programme, run in partnership with the Uttarakhand government, enrolled around 1,000 students from ITIs and polytechnics in a rigorous six-month online coding bootcamp.
Students attended live Zoom classes after college and relied on computer labs to complete assignments.
While graduates went on to secure internships and tech jobs with startup salaries exceeding Rs 6 lakh annually, the experience also exposed a deeper problem: unreliable computer labs meant many students simply couldn’t access learning consistently.
Rakesh’s journey mirrored parts of Prashant’s story. Raised in Delhi and educated in a government school, he discovered IIT through his elder brother before eventually working in consulting and startup growth roles.
When he reconnected with Prashant years later, he realised something meaningful was already taking shape.
CodeYogi, by Prashant Chaudhary, Rakesh Sehgal, and Priyanka Sethi, is reshaping who gets to learn coding in India.
“He was already doing something amazing with a very small team,” Rakesh says. “It felt like exactly the kind of work I wanted to be part of.”
Priyanka came from a different path. An engineering graduate with an MTech degree, she taught in a college in Uttar Pradesh before meeting Prashant through his education initiative.
What began as professional collaboration eventually became personal too, as the two later married.
“Within six months, I realised I was already helping market his initiative in my college,” she says, laughing.
While Prashant focused on curriculum and technology, Priyanka helped scale operations alongside a full-time job. Both she and Rakesh joined CodeYogi full-time only recently as the platform expanded rapidly.
Why CodeYogi stopped waiting for computers
Initially, CodeYogi’s model depended on college computer labs. Between 2020 and 2022, students attended live coding classes over Zoom while using institutional labs to complete programming assignments.
Although the pilot proved that students from government institutions could succeed in software careers, it also revealed a major obstacle: labs were often locked, systems malfunctioned frequently, electricity was unreliable, and many students rarely got enough hands-on practice.
By 2023, after two years of struggling with these infrastructure bottlenecks, the team decided to redesign the programme around the one device almost every student already owned — a smartphone.
“In homes where people may not own a television anymore, they still somehow buy a smartphone,” Prashant explains.
How do they actually code?
Rather than asking students to download heavy software, CodeYogi built a mobile-first system that worked entirely through a phone’s browser.
The learning journey began through a Telegram-based AI chatbot (and later shifted to WhatsApp for its newer AI fluency programme), where students watched short Hindi video lessons, answered quizzes, and received step-by-step guidance.
When it was time to write code, students opened a custom web-based coding editor designed specifically for low-end Android phones.
AI-powered learning support guides students through coding errors in Hindi, helping them understand mistakes instead of simply correcting them.
The browser-based editor featured a coding-friendly keyboard, AI-powered hints that explained programming errors in Hindi without automatically fixing them, and an evaluation system that checked assignments instantly. Because everything ran inside a browser, students needed neither laptops nor app downloads — even entry-level smartphones costing around Rs 4,000 could run the platform.
The entire curriculum was built around this mobile-first experience. Students wrote HTML, CSS and JavaScript, built websites and applications, tested their projects, and received AI-driven feedback directly from their phones.
Building for students who were never considered ‘tech-ready’
One of the biggest challenges was designing the platform for students unfamiliar with coding, English, or digital systems.
“More than us teaching students, students have taught us,” Prashant says.
The team adopted a deeply iterative approach, constantly redesigning lessons based on how students naturally interacted with technology.
One small example changed how they built lessons entirely.
While teaching CSS, students repeatedly typed ‘colour’ instead of the American spelling ‘color’ used in programming languages. Instead of simply correcting students, the team redesigned the lesson itself to explain why the code failed.
Instead of memorising theory alone, students now test real projects, debug errors, and see instant results of their code on low-cost smartphones.
“That’s when we realised we need to build around how students naturally think,” he says.
The AI layer became equally important.
For many government school students, traditional tech education simply did not exist. Teachers themselves often lacked digital confidence, while many students viewed private-sector tech jobs as inaccessible spaces meant only for English-speaking urban youth.
AI changed that dynamic.
“It doesn’t judge them,” Prashant explains. “Students ask questions freely because there’s no hesitation or embarrassment.”
The system offers contextual help and allows students to learn at their own pace — something the founders say has significantly improved confidence levels among learners.
Nearly 95 per cent of students on the platform learn entirely through smartphones. Around 48.6 per cent of learners are girls, while many advanced students come from non-STEM backgrounds.
When students stop being consumers and become builders
Over time, the founders noticed something bigger than skill development happening.
Students were no longer just consuming technology — they were beginning to build it.
CodeYogi encourages learners to solve local problems through projects, hackathons, and community challenges.
“Instead of saying ‘someone should build this’, students are now thinking, ‘Why can’t I build it?’” says Rakesh.
That shift is visible in students like Lakshmi Jhangir, a 17-year-old from Churu, Rajasthan, who studied in a small government school and comes from an arts background.
Today, she has cleared the qualifier for IIT Madras’ online data science programme and dreams of launching her own tech startup.
From waste management systems to digital library records, student-built projects are beginning to solve real local challenges in their communities.
“When I first heard about coding, I thought it was only for students with technical backgrounds and laptops,” she says. “But now I know students like us can also learn coding sitting at home on a phone.”
Lakshmi joined CodeYogi in 2024 through a district-level initiative in her school. She now builds websites and applications, including “Digital Sakhi” — a platform helping rural women learn digital marketing and sell products online.
“We didn’t have confidence earlier,” she says. “Now, if I have an idea, I feel I can build it myself.”
For Arjun from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, the turning point came after watching children demonstrate extraordinary Vedic maths skills at a district event.
“It made me think — if expensive coaching can help students do this, why can’t we build something for government school students like us?” he says.
That idea eventually became a Vedic maths web application he built through CodeYogi. The platform includes Abacus learning tools, live classes, YouTube-based lessons, and an AI-powered feature that explains maths problems in Hindi and English through uploaded photos.
Like many students on the platform, Arjun had earlier tried learning coding through YouTube but lacked access to laptops and resources.
“When I first heard about coding on mobile, I honestly didn’t think it was possible,” he says. “But once I started building on my phone, it felt mind-blowing.”
The projects students create are increasingly solving real community problems.
In one district, students built a waste management system later launched by district authorities. In another, students digitised library records that were previously maintained on paper registers.
Another learner built a custom Android keyboard extension converting Hindi inputs into English — solving communication barriers many students face online.
“These are problems someone sitting in a city may never even know exist,” Prashant says. “But students living there understand them immediately.”
Perhaps most importantly, students are beginning to see technology differently.
Earlier, many used phones only for YouTube or WhatsApp. Now, they are participating in hackathons, building LinkedIn portfolios, collaborating online, and experimenting with AI tools independently.
For many students, smartphones are no longer just tools for entertainment — they are becoming gateways to building careers in technology.
For the founders, that confidence may be the most meaningful outcome of all — not just teaching coding, but helping students believe they belong in the world of technology in the first place.
For decades, many students in underserved communities saw government jobs as the only stable path forward. White-collar private-sector careers often felt distant or inaccessible.
Now, that mindset is slowly shifting.
“Students are beginning to realise that skills matter more than degrees,” Prashant says. “And that these careers are possible for them too.”
For a generation learning to code through cracked screens and low-cost smartphones, that shift may matter just as much as the technology itself.
All images courtsey Codeyogi Foundation
