Manish Kudtarkar & AWS Student Builder Group At Parul University!

Manish Kudtarkar is a final-year B.Tech. Big Data Analytics student at Parul University, currently in his seventh semester, and the leader of the AWS Student Builder Group at Parul University. The group is a student community built around Amazon Web Services and cloud computing, formerly known as the AWS Cloud Club at Parul University.

It is one of the student-led technical communities supported by Tinkering Hub at the university, and it is mentored by Dr. Vaibhav Gandhi, Director of Tinkering Hub and the group’s Chief Mentor. Manish sums up its purpose in a single line.

Learning and building the future together.

For a campus group, the numbers are large. At the time of its creation, the community had 4,500 active members on Meetup, 2,000 followers on LinkedIn, and around 1,000 followers on Instagram. Interestingly, the growth on Instagram resulted in just 1 month after the creation of that account. As the community grows, these figures move upwards, and hence the community growth has been impeccable since then!

The group runs boot camps, workshops, seminars, and conferences; takes part in AWS community days in cities such as Vadodara and Ahmedabad; and helps first and second-year students put their projects onto the cloud. It collaborates with other institutes inside the university, which gives it a wide base of knowledge.

The community was previously known as the AWS Cloud Club at Parul University. AWS later renamed the initiative the AWS Student Builder Group, and the Parul University community continues under the updated name. The change reflects the evolution of AWS’s student community program rather than a renaming by the university.

Leadership passes through a structured and proven annual process. It starts with student nominations, who are assessed on suitability, communication skills, attitude, and teamwork capabilities. They are even assessed on their ability to engage and motivate their teammates. One student is selected by the university in consultation with the chief mentor and nominated to AWS for consideration as the next Group Leader. A practical condition applies: a candidate should have a year left at the university, so they can lead for a full term.

Manish did not arrive at the role. He grew into it. He describes loving Linux and terminals since the sixth standard, noticing AWS in school, and, in his words, watching AWS conquer the world of data centers and cloud services. He began in Goa as a volunteer with an AWS user group, continued after joining Parul University in 2023, and spent about two years helping the community grow before taking charge in June.

In the selection, communication carried the most weight. The panel wanted to know how a candidate talks to students and to developers, because developer relations is the heart of the role. Manish compares it to design: just as a designer has to understand how people think, a developer has to understand people and bring them together to build something good. As the source frames it, his appointment is better read as the result of the community’s leadership-development process than as an individual achievement alone.

Much of Manish’s work is teaching. Over several recent sessions, he has shown first and second-year students how to deploy on AWS, starting from a simple question: how does a student show their work to the world? His worked example is the portfolio, the central piece of work for any developer, designer, or engineer.

He keeps the focus on fundamentals. AWS has around 200 services, but students do not need all of them; he starts them on basics such as S3 storage and EC2 compute and points out that new users get free credits that can host a portfolio for up to a year. Certification sits at the centre of the learning, a theme covered in a companion article.

The group runs on a balance: students own the activities, organise the events, and take the leadership roles, while Tinkering Hub provides mentorship and institutional support so the community can sustain itself. Senior students, Manish notes, have faced the same problems juniors face now, which makes them well placed to help, and the group’s method is to get students building first, then develop their confidence and their voice.

We just provide them a stage. They will speak.

That balance between student ownership and institutional guidance is the point. It is how a club becomes a pipeline: initiative, accountability, teamwork, and leadership, practised on real technology, with a mentor and a university behind it.

Students interested in cloud computing, AWS, project development, and technical events can follow the group’s official channels for updates on workshops, boot camps, and learning opportunities.

WhatsApp channel: AWS Student Builder Group updates

Instagram: @aws.sbg_pu

• Manish Kudtarkar – Leader, AWS Student Builder Group at Parul University
• Dr. Vaibhav Gandhi – Director, Tinkering Hub and Chief Mentor
• AWS Student Builder Group at Parul University, student-led cloud community
• Tinkering Hub, Parul University – Supports student-led technical communities
• Amazon Web Services – Cloud computing platform