US firm offers lucrative job to IT whiz-kid from Nagpur but scraps offer when told he is only 15 years old!

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Fifteen-year-old computer whiz-kid Vedant Deokate from Maharashtra's Nagpur has done the nation proud by winning an international web development competition organised by a US company.</p>
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Vedant won the competition by writing as many as 2,066 lines of code over a span of two days. After winning the coding competition, Vedant was offered a job with a Rs 33 lakh per annum salary by the New Jersey company.</p>
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However, the job offer for a position in the HRD team of the New Jersey advertising company was withdrawn after the organisation was informed that Vedant was only 15 years old and still studying in Class X, according to a report in the Times of India.</p>
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However, the company also sent an encouraging message, telling Vedant  to not lose heart, and that he could contact them after completing his education. “We are impressed with your experience, professionalism, and approach,” the company wrote to Vedant, the report added.</p>
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Vedant, who is a self-trained coder, honed his skills on his mother's laptop. He has attended over two dozen online tutorials on the laptop that has been described as “slow” and “outdated”. It was also on his mother's Instagram account that he chanced upon the advertisement for the coding competition.</p>
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Vedant's parents Rajesh and Ashwini Deokate are assistant professors in an engineering college in Nagpur.</p>
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Speaking about their son's achievement, Mr Deokate said, “We had no clue. It was a call from my son's school that told us about this offer.” It was the school that helped Vedant write back and share his age and other details with the company, Mr Deokate said.</p>
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Vedant received an email containing the offer letter fort he job. He was confused and told his teachers about it. “They were stunned when it turned out to be authentic,” Rajesh said.</p>
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It was then when the company got to know that Vedant was just a 15-year-old studying in the 10th standard. Rajesh is now thinking of buying a new laptop for his son, so he can get better at what he is already good at.</p>