Not always an empty mind is the devil’s workshop. And 24-year-old Vishal Mishra is an example of the same. After he was bedridden following an accident in December 2018, Vishal wanted to utilise his free time. When he couldn’t find an app or website dedicated to public opinion on the upcoming elections, he invented Pollcaster, a polling platform which allows users to conduct own polls thereby taking into account the mood of the common public. Vishal is pursuing Masters in Information Technology from a university in Australia, and is originally from Kalyan. Vishal, who came to visit his family on November 14 after his semester, had fallen from his scooter and was bedridden; he wanted to utilise his time doing something productive. His timing for the website couldn’t have been better considering that the Lok Sabha election is barely months away. The website has already attracted 200 users in two weeks alone and more than 80 users in a single day on the app. Mishra completed his diploma in Computer Engineering from KJ Somaiya College and later did his software engineering from the University of Wollongong in Australia. He is now pursuing his Masters in IT from the same university. “Since elections were around the corner and every news channel was talking about the same, I just wanted to experiment and ask others about their opinion. I searched the web but found no dedicated app with an overview. As a result, I decided to build one on my own. I named it PollCaster — since I was bedridden that time in plaster I made the name rhyming with plaster. It is a dedicated polling platform loaded with many features like public polls, private polls, custom-timed polls, you can request for analytics once your poll ends and many more things,” he said. “I am looking to collaborate with various public platforms and offer my service for free. There are questions which have attracted quite a good attention,” Vishal said. CAST YOUR VOTE

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