Amit Rana Interview

“This developed my interest in the teaching industry,” he tells us. “After quitting my job quite early in my career, the first thing I did was to start a training centre.”

In the beginning, he was mostly teaching engineering students, training them with practical hands on with microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi.

“Slowly we started conducting training for school students, teaching them how to build robots, how to make apps using App Inventor, Python programming, and Arduino,” Amit says. “For a couple years we also ran a Code Club, which was an activity where we used to visit schools and teach Python and HTML.”

What kind of things do you teach?

I mostly teach internet of things, Embedded Systems and PCB Design. I use Raspberry Pi, Azure IoT Hub, AWS IoT Core, AVR / ARM7 microcontrollers, PIC microcontrollers, [and] Eagle and KiCad for PCB design.

How did you find out about Raspberry Pi?

When Raspberry Pi was to be launched, I was getting newsletters from element14 and had read a few posts on social media, so I ordered it first thing when it was launched in India. I still have my first 256MB board with big SD card slot, and it’s working just fine.

What is Kitflix?

Kitflix is an e-learning website which hosts online courses on electronics, embedded systems, IoT, and programming, using recorded self-paced and live online sessions.

How has Kitflix been received?

As said, I also had a training institute (Vidya Robotics) which is closed now. Kitflix is a brand we chose for our online course platform which sounds a little catchy. So far we’re doing good: we have more than 17,200 students across 150 countries for our online courses through Kitflix and other partner sites like Skillshare and Udemy. And we have about 1000 visitors each day to our website.

Any student success stories you can share?

There are many. Some of them are listed on our homepage. Many of my students are now working in a variety of industries across the globe. Many went on for higher education in countries abroad; many are working for elite institutes like IIT in India.

Anything else you'd like to add?

I am a person passionate towards spreading the education in electronics, embedded systems, and IoT, which is a field often considered [to be] under the umbrella of IT skills, but still it’s excessively big and all-encompassing. My vision is to create a kind of ‘Khan Academy’ for electronics and programming education.