Bangalore boy’s digital shopper charms Gates

On Friday, 21-year-old Bangalore boy Harishankar Vijayrajan took off for Singapore. His real destination? Microsoft. After earning a pat fro...

On Friday, 21-year-old Bangalore boy Harishankar Vijayrajan took off for Singapore. His real destination? Microsoft. After earning a pat from the legendary Bill Gates in Beijing a few days ago, Harishankar is signing up with the global software giant as Technology Specialist.

Harishankar bagged the job after leading a Singapore team to the top in the Asia-Pacific College Student .NET Development Competition.

His team — students of Nanyang Technology University in Singapore — was an all-Indian affair. And they topped the Microsoft charts with Autoshop, a digital supermarket solution.

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‘‘In a supermarket, people waste time waiting for their items to be scanned and billed,’’ explains Harishankar. So how does an Autoshop work? Consisting of a touch screen monitor and a bar code scanner connected to the main supermarket computer, the device is attached to individual shopping carts.

All you need to do is insert a smart card into a special slot to be identified by the supermarket. Next month, his team is off to Barcelona for the international Imagine Cup to pit their wits against 14 teams.