Some founders build companies out of ambition. Shivam Lahane built one out of everything that was supposed to stop them.
Before they were even born, doctors warned their parents that the pregnancy carried risk, that the baby might not arrive healthy, that development could be difficult. That warning turned out to be the first line of a much longer story. Growing up, Shivam faced a stack of challenges that hit both body and education at once. Doctors said they might not grow past five feet and that they would be physically weak. Their eyesight developed poorly too. By first grade their vision sat around -6 to -7, and even from the front row, the board was a blur.
The difficulties kept coming. Between ninth and tenth grade, Shivam developed severe genu valgum, better known as knock knees. It changed the way they walked and made them a target for mockery. School wasn’t going well either, with scores around 50% in both ninth and tenth grade and almost no sense of where their life was headed.
Then something shifted. Shivam reached a decision that a lot of people talk about but few actually act on: they refused to let their circumstances decide who they would become.
Turning the Corner
The change started with discipline that bordered on relentless. Shivam began studying from morning until night, day after day, and the results were hard to argue with. After scraping by at 50% in ninth and tenth grade, they jumped to roughly 85% in eleventh grade. Same person, same challenges, completely different trajectory.
Twelfth grade threw another obstacle in the way. Surgery, and the long recovery that followed, meant they couldn’t sit their exams normally. During the first attempt after the operation, the pain was constant. Medication would dull it for a few hours, then it would come roaring back. It was the kind of stretch that breaks people.
Instead, it changed how Shivam thought about the future entirely. Lying there in pain, they stopped focusing only on their own struggles and started thinking about everyone else living with disabilities and hard circumstances. What could actually make their lives easier?
From an Idea to 20 Smart Gloves
The answer arrived in the form of smart gloves, technology designed to help people who cannot speak communicate more easily. The idea stuck. Shivam decided they wanted to build technology that could genuinely help people with disabilities, and make communication more accessible for those who had been left out.
The obstacle, predictably, was money. They found a Harvard-affiliated entrepreneurship program, worked through its modules, graduated, and applied for its seed funding. That effort paid off with a $5,000 award. Shivam used it to build 20 smart gloves and put them directly into the hands of 20 students who were unable to speak. An idea became something real, something that helped actual people.
Building for Other Students
That was only the beginning. Shivam went on to create a community helping BBA and MBA students learn case-study frameworks, find teammates, and enter case competitions. It grew past 1,000 members, a genuine space where students collaborate and find people whose skills complement their own.
Building those communities surfaced a bigger problem. Students have the ambition and ability to do remarkable things, but finding the right opportunities is unnecessarily hard. Competitions, internships, research roles, scholarships, grants, jobs, fellowships, conferences, funding, and potential teammates are scattered across dozens of websites, social networks, and university pages.
That frustration became CompeteX.
CompeteX pulls student opportunities and collaboration into one ecosystem. Students can discover programs matched to their interests and goals, find teammates for competitions, research, and startups, and build a verifiable portfolio. Because achievements are earned on the platform, they can be verified there too, which means no more inflated claims or fake profiles. Organizations, in turn, can find genuinely talented students who fit what they’re offering.
Every piece of CompeteX traces back to something Shivam Lahane lived: struggling to find direction, discovering opportunities too late, and learning how much students can do when they finally get the right people and the right chances. The journey was never a straight line, and that’s exactly what makes it worth building on.
