Not every success story begins with being the topper of the class, infact sometimes it begins with a scores which often land us to doubting ourselves.Tejesh Vaish, a 26-year-old engineer from Lucknow, scored just 48 percent in Class 5. Years later, he secured admission to IIT Kanpur and now leads AI engineering at a Dubai-based company, where he earns Rs 2.5 crore a year!While Indian households often measure their children’s marks with their future, his story actually flips the script. And not just that, today he also hopes to show students that a career in AI is not limited to those who study at an IIT.Let us look at how this young engineer came this far.
Meet Tejesh Vaish: The sweet sellers son who went from humble beginnings to leading AI engineering in Dubai
Tejesh Vaish, a 26-year-old from Lucknow, now leads AI engineering at Dubai-based Lumian.ai, where he earn Rs 2.5 crore a year, according to an India Today report. His start was far more modest. He grew up in a household where his father ran a small sweet shop, and he scored just 48 per cent in Class 5.Things changed slowly when his marks rose to about 94 per cent in Class 10 and 95 per cent in Class 12. He then took a drop year, combining six hours of coaching with nearly 12 hours of self-study, burning the midnight oil. According to the report, he ranked ninth in UPSEE 2019 and joined the Computer Science programme at IIT Kanpur.
College helped him broaden his view
He says, “IIT Kanpur helped me realise how many paths were open to an undergraduate student. Being around people who were doing internships, contributing to open source and working on research made me realise that I could try those things too.”The PD Murti Scholarship eased the financial pressure on his parents, according to IIT Kanpur’s scholarship page, which includes a note of thanks from a Tejesh Vaish (BT/CSE), a PD Murti Scholarship recipient, saysing he hopes to help other students one day.While at IIT Kanpur, he interned at Securonix and Texas Instruments, and graduated in 2023 with a CPI of 9.14 after doing research with Director Professor Manindra Agrawal.
What is his role at Lumian.ai?
At Lumian.ai, he leads AI engineering and earns Rs 2.5 crore annually, building production AI agents for Amazon brands, along with the systems that keep them dependable, such as permissions, approvals and evaluation, explaining that, he said, “A user request only becomes useful when the system can reach the right tools and information, keep the right context and fail in a way people can understand.”
His work is not only about jobs
According to the report, his mother, Mamta Vaish, was diagnosed with cancer around 2024 and later went into complete remission. During that time, he spoke with homoeopathic practitioners and began building Homeo AI, a support tool for record-keeping, reference searches, and document preparation. The report notes that practitioners remain responsible for reviewing information and making clinical decisions.Tejesh also argues that an IIT degree is not a must for an AI career. Vaish says, “IIT helped me because of the academic environment, the people around me, and the opportunities that came with it. But students from other colleges can build strong careers in AI too.” He suggests starting with Python, SQL, data structures, probability, statistics, and linear algebra, then moving to practical skills like APIs, Git, and testing.His message to students is simple, “An early result does not have to define you. Start with the next thing you can improve: one subject, one skill or one project.”
