Millfield student develops India’s answer to TikTok, ‘Theek Thaak’​

Millfield Upper Sixth student Saina Sodhi from Delhi has developed a social media platform based on TikTok that has seen her named as India Achievers’ Young Entrepreneur of the Year. ‘Theek Thaak’, which was developed by Saina and released in November 2020, was created after Saina wanted to increase Indian culture representation on apps like TikTok. The app has caught the attention of national Indian press including The Indian Express, Times Now, News18 CNN and popular Indian actress, Raveena Tandon.

The 17 year old, who is studying Chemistry, Chinese Mandarin, Mathematics and Physics at leading independent school Millfield in Somerset, started using non-coding websites such as Bubble and initially sought advice from the school’s IT department before working with a women-centric development team to move her efforts forward. She used social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat as frameworks for her app’s structure.

The main features of the app are video-uploading and video-editing as well as live-streaming and live-broadcasting. It also comes with a ‘Theekcode’ scanner as well as geolocation, reactions, social sharing, sounds, ‘Theekmojis’ and a Stories function among many others. The app is also available in eight Indian languages like Gujarati and Tamil, and Saina hopes to add more languages to the app when it’s second update launches in March this year.

Saina hopes to attend university while also continuing to build Theek Thaak, with a distant goal of transforming her business from a software development company into a Biotech firm. Saina believes that having a degree will help her to achieve this goal.

Saina says, “I chose to attend Millfield because of its pre-professional spirit and its international community. At Millfield, I had a piece of home but also could integrate with other communities on campus. The school’s atmosphere is immensely problem-solving driven. There were so many hurdles that I had to jump to finally release the app, and Millfield moulded me to never give up. I’m taking inspiration from fearless entrepreneurs of today to continuously improve the app. We still have a long way to go, and I won’t be content until my app can target every remote place in India and its users can successfully showcase their creative expressions. I have lots and lots of hope and sometimes have to keep my dreams in check!”

Millfield Headmaster Gavin Horgan says, “Saina is an inspiration for innovative young people all over the world who want to increase representation in the tech industry. We are so proud of her here at Millfield, and absolutely cannot wait to see where Theek Thaak takes her next.”