← riza

riza.

Riza is a 16-year-old founder, developer, and builder from Kerala, India, focused on AI products and developer communities. He started coding at 9 by building Minecraft plugins after school and has been shipping ever since.

By 16, Riza had won 8 hackathons, qualified for the International Olympiad in AI (IOAI), been selected as a top100coders fellow from 5,000+ applicants, keynoted a national research conference at 14 alongside ex-ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan, received a personal award from the Chief Minister of Kerala, and founded Zerograd, a 500+ community where people rank up by shipping code.

how riza got here.

At 9, Riza wrote his first Minecraft plugin. Most kids his age were playing games; he was modding them. That curiosity led him to Python, then AI, then hardware. By 13, he was building coin sorters that caught the attention of state government ministers.

At 14, he placed 2nd globally in Dubai with smart goggles he built on a Raspberry Pi Zero, a computer vision project that identified objects in real time. That same year, he keynoted the IRCC conference alongside Nambi Narayanan, one of India's most celebrated rocket scientists. The audience was hundreds of students. Riza was 14.

At 15, he won at the latest OpenAI hackathon, attended YC SUS India, pitched his startup to Y Combinator partners Jared Friedman and Jon Xu, and met them over dinner.

what riza is building.

Riza builds AI products and runs Zerograd, a builder community for Gen-Z developers. He is based in Kerala, India and is reachable at codewithriza@gmail.com.

awards & recognition.

kerala, india · rizas.xyz · @rizawastaken