Truck driver’s daughter beats fin odds, scores 99.4%, weaves IIT dream

Hyderabad: Kethavath Sravanthi, daughter of a truck driver, who scored an impressive 994 marks out of 1,000 in her second-year Intermediate exams, hopes to become the first person in her family to study at an IIT.
The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) declared the results of the Intermediate first year and second year on Tuesday.
Sravanthi, who was pulled out of a private school and admitted to a tribal welfare school in Class 5 due to her family's financial constraints, wants to pursue engineering at one of the top IITs so that she can "give her parents a comfortable life they have been deprived of so far." Her mother is a fruit vendor.
"Both my parents have a meagre income. All I want to do in life is to study well and secure a high-paying job so we can lead a comfortable life," said the 17-year-old. A resident of Devarakonda, the teenager said while she is enthused by her Intermediate performance, she is keen on pulling off a similar feat in JEE as well.
"I secured 79 percentile in JEE main and qualified for advanced. Now, I am putting in all my efforts to crack this exam," she said, adding while she has not made up her mind about which branch to pursue, her goal is to get into an IIT.
"No one in my extended family has ever studied at an IIT. I will be the first if I get in," Sravanthi said.
A student of the Centre of Excellence, Parigi, under the Telangana Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Society (TGTWREIS), the girl said it would be financially difficult for her parents to fund her undergraduate studies. "Even my brother wrote his Inter second-year examinations along with me. So, my parents will have to support both of us," she said.
Until the Covid-19 lockdown, her father used to drive an auto-rickshaw. "He only started driving a truck in the last few years, and we're still struggling financially," Sravanthi said. Her family had to give up cultivating cotton on their 2-acre land due to lack of resources.