LiveFounder
GotchaEducation
Software for schools: a class and progress app for Hifz classes, an exam platform that works offline, and a community service tracker.
- Use
- 8 schools, 22 teachers, 182 students (to 17 July 2026)
- Team
- Five people
Talhah Patelia
I’m a fourth-year electrical and information engineering student at Wits in Johannesburg. I build software for schools and for campus transport, and I compete with the Wits supercomputing team.
- Studying
- BSc(Eng) Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand. Fourth year.
- Building
- GotchaEducation, school software used by 182 students at 8 schools. NavigoTransport, a live shuttle app for Wits students.
- Competing
- Wits HPC team. 2025 ASC finalist (top 25 of 300+ teams) and 2nd overall at the 2024 CHPC national competition.
- Funded by
- The Special Dean’s Award (full Master’s tuition) and the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Candidate Fellowship.
Work
LiveCo-founder and director
NavigoTransport
A shuttle app for Wits students. It plans trips on the phone itself, so routes and timetables work without signal.
- Use
- Just under 1,000 student users
- Available on
- Google Play and iOS TestFlight
Results
Award Project
Highlights
Top 25
Top 25 finalist, ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge
One of 25 finalist teams from more than 300 that entered, at the final round at Qinghai University in Xining, China.
Asia Supercomputer Community
Full tuition
Special Dean's Award
Full tuition for a Master's at Wits, awarded to members of the Wits HPC team for national and international student supercomputing results.
University of the Witwatersrand
2nd overall
2nd overall, CHPC National Student Cluster Competition
Wits A placed second of ten teams, won the MATLAB Coding Challenge and took the highest LINPACK result.
Centre for High Performance Computing
1st
1st place, AFRETEC Innovation Challenge, Nairobi
Led a decentralised farm storage and logistics platform to first place at the University of Nairobi. The prize included a funded incubator stay in Rwanda.
AFRETEC and the University of Nairobi
R100,000
R100,000 pitch prize, Allan Gray Orbis Foundation
Won R100,000 for GotchaExam at the foundation's Founders Pitch, which the foundation calls the E-Squared Varsity Pitch.
Allan Gray Orbis Foundation
Winner
Winning pitch, IEEE Entrepreneurship Prospectors workshop
Gotcha, an exam-integrity venture built with Jesse Thornburg, was chosen as the winning pitch from seven teams.
IEEE Entrepreneurship and the Wits Innovation Centre
Winner
Winner, TADHack South Africa
Won the national hackathon at 16 with Maftuha, an all-in-one platform for schools.
TADHack, with MTN and Geekulcha
Full Colours
3D-printed face shields for medical staff
Printed more than 1,000 face shields during the 2020 lockdown, distributed through the Salaam Foundation. Earned Full Colours at Reddam House.
Reddam House Bedfordview
Education
2023 to 2026 (expected)
University of the Witwatersrand
BSc(Eng), Electrical and Information Engineering
Fourth year. Member of the Wits HPC team.
2020 to 2022
Reddam House Bedfordview
National Senior Certificate (IEB), Bachelor's pass
Deputy chairperson of the diversity portfolio in 2022.
2018 to 2019
Auckland Park Academy of Excellence
Grades 8 and 9
Where the first robots and science fair entries were built.
Writing
Why my apps work offline
GotchaEducation and NavigoTransport solve different problems, but both have to keep working when the connection does not.