Immigrant Entrepreneur Highlight: Hari Senthilkumar
Meet Hari, an immigrant entrepreneur and student at UCLA.
The word entrepreneur often evokes images of venture capitalists, pitch meetings, fancy intro dinners and the race to become the next hot IPO.
However, entrepreneurship is more applicable to “common folk” than the media often leads us to believe. In fact, entrepreneurship serves as a means of survival for many people in America, especially immigrants. On a quest to highlight this, the 2019–2020 Immigrants Rising Fellows have begun a project to capture videos and written stories of immigrant entrepreneurs and hustlers in our communities.
This article focuses on an interview between Sumana, Immigrants Rising Ambassador, and Hari. Sumana and Hari met through a professional co-ed Entrepreneurship Fraternity at UCLA called Sigma Eta Pi. Hari has been a very active and dedicated member of the organization. He has been an inspiration and a great embodiment of the immigrant hustle, which is why Sumana decided to interview him.
What is your immigration story?
Hari: In November of 2000 I was born in India. My dad originally had a job that involved a lot of traveling and when I was around a year and a half years old my dad got a job in Cupertino and we moved here. We returned to India when my mom was about to give birth to my little brother. Then after his birth we moved to Singapore and that is where I did most of my primary education.
The educational system in Singapore is very intense. I would go to school at 6am and come back at 4pm. Moving to America and going to school here was a very different environment. I came to America again around 6th grade and did all my schooling since then in the States.
Can you give us a brief introduction and insight into what you have going on right now?
Hari: I am a second year student at UCLA studying computer science. I am currently involved in a few orgs including Sigma Eta Pi, Product Space and a research lab. I am trying my best to gain mentorship from other students and the professor in order to give back to the lab as much as I can. I don’t have many active projects at the moment, but I have a few things in mind that I want to kick off.
[Note: I think it is very cool that Hari chose to explore research because I know some college students who ended up joining a lab and then continuing on with the lab when the research had gained enough funding to turn into a company! Research has a strong entrepreneurial quality and is not often seen that way.]
What does the research focus on?
Hari: The research is focused on deep learning combined with physics. For example, we would have people send us videos of themselves throwing a ball or an apple and the computer program we built would have to predict the path of the object. Basically we are seeing if the model can predict the laws of physics on its own without prior knowledge.
How do you think being an immigrant has affected the way you approach things in general?
Hari: I have to think a lot more about for the long term than other people. Like ‘what are the consequences?’ of every action I take, since my future is not as secure as my friends. I think we all (immigrants) have a very gritty mindset. I have a drive that I will do it and even if it is hard, I will get it done.
I also think a lot of immigrants have a frugal mindset, which I actually really appreciate, and it encourages me to think about new solutions to problems and ways to come up with more affordable solutions.
How did you first get exposed to the concept of entrepreneurship?
Hari: I joined this club that my AP Chem teacher started and we participated in this contest hosted by MIT in which we had to pursue a community problem in order to get grants. We were trying to find a problem and we came up with many different ideas, but the one we finally stuck on was inspired by our teammate Bill who is disabled. Bill is unable to walk, turn his neck or run without a caretaker next to him. We met with a lot of people, including his parents, psychiatrists and other partner organizations. I got to experience entrepreneurship this way by being exposed to the idea of problem identification, solving, and market research.
Talking with Bill and seeing how a real problem can be solved for a potential customer through different solutions was a very unique experience. Looking back, this was entrepreneurship even though I didn’t even know what that word meant at the time.
Walk me through your experience with entrepreneurship after this initial exposure.
Hari: Senior year I got very involved in different projects and finding out what interested me. I made an electric skateboard with my friends. I also made a robot arm that plays tic tac toe using a google assistant and was able to get grants for our robotics team. I focused senior year on building technical skills to grow and expand my knowledge.
Also during my junior year summer, I was volunteering at a senior center and was thinking of ways to do cool stuff to keep the residents engaged. I made this violin aid technology that would help them play the violin. This was a super fun project and I was happy that I was able to bring smiles to their faces. It was so cool to see how technology could help change people’s lives.
Freshman year of college, I joined SEP and got exposed to many different facets of entrepreneurship and how to navigate your own venture. I felt like one of my biggest weaknesses at that time was the ability to sell myself or whatever project I was working on. So I took on a project of making $500 of profit through a side hustle project. I chose to sell laser wood art. I went out and started marketing immediately, talked to friends and told them how much could be done in terms of this type of artwork and was able to sell the product.
Moving forward I want to do more CS projects, because there is a very low cost to enter the market.
What do you think is a common misconception people have of immigrants in this country?
Hari: I feel like most people think that immigrants are dependant or cluster together but what I have noticed is that other immigrants are the most independent people I know. They are left on their own on how to go about life. There is a different culture and you have to figure things out. To the outside world that may not seem so complicated. I feel like it has been cool to see a lot of cultural meme groups pop up on Facebook and raise more awareness about immigrant communities.
Upon wrapping up the interview I was able to absorb this experience as not only humbling and grounding, but also as a chance to get to know Hari through the lens of immigration impact. It reminded me that no one is alone in their pursuit of trying to thrive despite the shackles that immigration seems to place upon us. Discovering community and cherishing these stories are important in the effort to build solidarity and inspiring others to pursue entrepreneurship as well.
