Indian-origin CEO failed in Physics, interned with NASA. Now, she's building flying boats

Sampriti Bhattacharyya is the founder and CEO of Navier. (Image credit: Instagram)

When in school, Sampriti Bhattacharyya was an average student who failed in Physics and was told by her teacher to become a housewife. Years later, the entrepreneur who grew up in Kolkata, is now building flying boats. The 36-year-old is the founder and CEO of Navier, a company that is revolutionising the maritime industry with its electric hydrofoil boat called Navier 30.

Speaking to digital creator Nas Daily, Bhattacharyya said that as a student she was in love with Physics and did not let her failure or the teacher's comments hold her back.

"I was not the best at Maths in high school, and he (the teacher) thought the best I could be was probably a housewife or work on a much smaller job," she said.

At 20, Bhattacharyya applied for an internship at 540 companies and was accepted by only one particle physics laboratory in the US. "In each of the 540 emails I actually told them what I could do for them and only four responded. And then ultimately only one worked out and that was an internship at Fermilab," she told Nas Daily.

Bhattacharyya then flew to Chicago as a research assistant. That's when she fell in love with science, she said. This was followed by another internship with NASA, a masters degree from Ohio State University, and a PhD from MIT. She then moved to San Franciso, raised $12 million, and hired a team to build the boat.

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A post shared by Sampriti Bhattacharyya (@sampriti_bh)

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In 2016, she was also featured by Forbes as one of the top 30 most powerful young change agents of the world.

"In the last 13 years, I learned so much, it gave me the confidence to tackle any kind of hard problems whether it was to design nuclear reactors or building flight controllers or building this flying boat," Bhattacharyya said.

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A post shared by Sampriti Bhattacharyya (@sampriti_bh)

The Navier 30 has a design similar to airplanes and has three wings underwater and when the boat moves fast enough, the wind lifts it above the waves. This way, not only is it faster and more energy efficient, but it also makes sailing smoother and almost noiseless.

Read more: Elon Musk reacts to growing list of Indian-origin CEOs in top companies