India, July 2 -- Harsh Gupta, a 19-year-old from Maharashtra, failed his Class 11 exams but chose not to give up. With steady effort and the backing of his family, he retook the exams, cleared Class 12, and earned a place at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

Gupta, whose father runs a small pani puri stall in Kalyan, one of the founding cities of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, enrolled at a coaching institute in Kota, Rajasthan, and eventually secured a seat at IIT Roorkee in Uttarakhand. He now aims to enter the civil services, NDTV reported.

Harsh scored 98.59 per cent in JEE-Mains and qualified for JEE-Advanced, the engineering entrance exams for admission to colleges including IITs. However, he did not secure admission to t...