It starts with an idea. One idea can inspire someone to create a business that works to help improve the lives of others. It takes a person with the entrepreneurial spirit and drive to run with their idea and to make it the best it can be. Pavan Kolluru possesses the motivation that it takes to run a business. Through hours of brainstorming, coding and development, Pavan founded the website: ThinkUnbiased.

Starting in the fall of 2020, Pavan was thinking of a website, two websites. The first, to help better educate the community.

“Me and my sister would argue about politics all the time,” Pavan said. “And my big thing for her was I always said that she was blinded by the media and she never even tried to look at the other perspective and that gave me the idea.”

His first site, ThinkUnbiased, was coded and designed by Pavan with help from his dad. Pavan worked to make his site as accessible as possible and to create a design that would attract the attention of the user. After four months of work, ThinkUnbiased was published as a political site to differentiate news sources into left leaning, right leaning or unbiased views. One of Pavan’s teachers noted the first time he recalled hearing about the creation of ThinkUnbiased.

“I was really impressed,” social studies teacher Sean Fowler said. “I wouldn’t even know how you would begin to do what he did, so I thought that was pretty interesting.”

Creating a website from scratch was one of the signs of an early entrepreneur. While Pavan was developing ThinkUnbiased, another idea was starting to take shape. Ethnic Touch, a passion project of Pavan’s, was in the works.

“So [Ethnic Touch] is meant to bring these local or non local ethnic stores that don’t have a very big customer base, bring them to the online world, give them more customers and give the customers a bigger range of where they can get more authentic goods,” Pavan said.

While Ethnic Touch is still in development, the idea for the project has not stopped. In November, Pavan was awarded second place for the Louis S. Sachs Scholarship for submitting his business proposal for Ethnic Touch. The Louis S Sachs Scholarship recognizes high school seniors in the St. Charles and St. Louis area who have a bright future in the world of business. Characteristics of honorees include the entrepreneurial spirit, work ethic and dedication to their businesses and projects. Pavan’s sister, Lavanya, was a support system in the development of both websites.

“He’s very charismatic,” Lavanya said. “He’s quick-thinking and hardworking, he’s very passionate and he works really hard at what he cares about. If he wants to do something, and he’s determined, he will do it.”

For a young entrepreneur, many obstacles are in the way of creating a business. But working around those obstacles and creating a business aimed to help others is a sign of someone that has the drive and motivation to succeed.

“I never predict the future as a student of history,” Fowler said. “But I will say, it looks like he has a lot of opportunities and I’ll be intrigued to see what he does with his talents going forward.”

“So anytime I pitch it to someone and they say ‘that’s awesome, I have the exact problem.’ It just makes me know that I’m going on the right track and making a difference in at least one person’s life,” Pavan said.

This story was originally published on FHNtoday.com on December 15, 2021.