Connecting the World, One Community at a Time

I spent every summer of my childhood visiting my grandparents in Osur, a village in south India. Roaming the fields with my brother and playing with the farm animals was pure bliss. But Osur had very little infrastructure: no access to running water, electricity, or the internet.

The first time I accessed the internet was via a 28.8 kbps dial-up modem at an internet cafe in Chennai, researching graduate schools in the United States. Even though it took a half hour for the university websites to load, I was blown away. As someone who had always been fascinated with life on the other side of the world, I used this newfound tool to enroll in a computer engineering program and come to America.

Grad school marked the first time I used true broadband internet at high speeds and realized how powerful it could be. I was stunned by the easy access to information in the digital world and how many opportunities it unlocks: communication, education, economic empowerment, and more. The gap between what I had growing up and what I’d gained with that access impacted me profoundly. I wanted to find a way to narrow that divide.

From balloons to beams of light

My passion for bridging the connectivity gap led me to X, where I joined the Loon team. At Loon, we were inspired by the question, “what if we could deliver connectivity to the unconnected using a network of stratospheric balloons?” As we experimented and de-risked our technology, we found a way to beam the internet between two balloons 100 kilometers apart in the stratosphere. This solution wasn’t the right fit for Loon, but it inspired the team and me to explore using this technology back on earth, where we founded Taara.

Today, Taara uses beams of light to transmit high-speed internet from one point to another without the arduous process of digging up the earth to lay fiber cables. Even though the world is in the midst of a digital transformation, nearly a third of the global population still needs access to meaningful connectivity. Taara aims to make the opportunities enabled by the internet available for everyone. We’ve been working with internet service providers and telcos in 13 countries, including Airtel in India, to expand access to affordable broadband to more communities.

I recently visited Osur, the village where I spent my childhood summers, and Chennai, where my parents raised me and still live today. While the village now has access to running water and electricity, it doesn’t yet have high-speed internet. Now, using Taara, we’re just weeks away from lighting up the area.

I’m grateful that more people in my hometown will be able to access valuable information about education, healthcare, and global markets thanks to the tools that will be available at their fingertips. I can’t wait to spend time with my family working from my childhood home when it’s up and running online.