When he was just a child, Uday Pitambare's parents bought a school computer for his older brother. Immediately fascinated by the machine, Uday would use it every chance he got. He spent time learning how it worked and practicing popular programming languages at the time. When Uday decided to study computer engineering as an undergraduate student and continued to get his master's in computer science at Indiana University, it was a surprise to no one.
Starting his career as a software engineer was thrilling for Uday; suddenly, he got to turn his lifetime hobby into a real, productive career that made a change in the world. For the first five years after obtaining his master's degree, he worked as a senior software engineer at Aptiv, an automotive technology supplier that aims to make roads greener and safer. At Aptiv, Uday implemented a deep learning model that used synthetic camera data from a game engine to build a prototype of an autonomous vehicle simulator.
His work was critical to the safety of all of us on the road, and Uday was extremely passionate about what he did. He also integrated virtual sensor models with the autonomous vehicles themselves so the data from the simulation environment would be included in the vehicles' decision-making process. One of his proudest accomplishments throughout his time at Aptiv was the design and use of the 3C LiDAR perception algorithm that helps figure out the drivable area surrounding the vehicle. This is just one of four patents authored by Uday in the autonomous driving space.
Stepping into a different arena, Uday began working as a co-investigator at Era Medical College & Hospital in Lucknow, India. For a year, he used AI and deep learning to help triage, diagnose, and report chest X-rays that showed signs of pulmonary tuberculosis. Taking over 500,000 publicly available chest X-rays and collecting several thousand from hospitals across India, and using them to train the machine learning model, Uday was able to provide an innovative approach to diagnosing pulmonary tuberculosis. He even helped train hospital staff to use the technology and set up a cloud-based data collection infrastructure.
In 2020, Uday decided to take on a new endeavor. Uday and his co-founder, Sagar Mutha, built BrewApps, a company that helps its clients develop mobile applications, web platforms, and cloud solutions. Serving every industry from healthcare to education, the pair helps make technical features more accessible for startups and small businesses that may not have a dedicated technology team. For Uday, leading a team that develops mobile applications has offered a new set of challenges, but he finds the work exciting and meaningful.
To Uday and Sagar, BrewApps is more than just a technology service provider; its role as an employer is just as meaningful. Though growth was challenging at first, BrewApps' team is now 30-strong, and it has become a top-rated firm on Upwork. The responsibility of employing individuals and helping them shape their careers is not taken lightly by either of the co-founders. Uday spends a lot of time mentoring his team, providing training resources, and keeping up with their career goals. Not all software engineers go on to fill leadership roles, but for Uday, it has always felt natural.
Having been friends for a long time, Uday and Sagar stepped out of their comfort zones to pursue their shared vision as entrepreneurs. Although developing applications that millions of people use is fulfilling, to Uday, the best part of his role as a co-founder is helping his employees shape their dreams and find their passions. As a committed leader and thoughtful innovator, BrewApps is just the beginning of Uday's entrepreneurial journey.
