Young Indian app developer gets top honours at Apple Swift Student Challenge

Arihant Marwaha's iOS app GuGu promises to help students develop good habits and maintain a positive mindset.

Every year, there is a marked increase in sales and services on Apple App Store worldwide.

In India alone, app developers generated a whopping $5.31 billion (around Rs 44,447 crore) in billings and sales in 2024.

Mobile app development sector is fast emerging as a lucrative avenue for employment in the subcontinent. Learning early in their life will give students, who pass out of college an edge over peers.

One such shining example is the 20-year old Arihant Marwaha, who has won Apple's 2025 Swift Student Challenge.

He is in his third year in Noida-based college pursuing Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering with honours specialisation in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from 2022-2026.

Every year, Apple invites youngsters worldwide to participate in Swift Student Challenge to offer solutions to real-world problems.

Arihant Marwaha.

Mental wellness issues have increasingly risen worldwide and have become a major public health concern. Due to past-faced life to reach deadlines in a short time, has resulted in mental stress in all age groups.

Worldwide, people particularly in urban regions, are glued to desktops or TVs or doom-scrolling on their smartphones resulting in very low physical activity. This leads to lifestyle-linked diseases such as Hypertension (high blood pressure), Diabetes and more.

Inspired by his pet dog GuGu, Marwaha developed a wellness companion iOS app with the same name and submitted this to Apple's Swift Student Challenge. It promises to help students develop good habits and maintain a positive mindset.

GuGu app UI.

Thanks to encouragement from his family, Marwaha has been coding since he was in 5th standard and was able to pick up Apple's Swift coding language easily.

"The app was built using SwiftUI, UIKit, Core Data models for the pet's behaviour, and SwiftCharts for data visualisation," said Marwaha to Deccan Herald.

To make it fun and keep the user motivated throughout the journey, the user interface is designed in a game-like goal completion system. There is also the option to create custom goals to be completed over a day.

"GuGu will be impactful for students to reduce stress. They will be able to plan their daily routine - taking breaks, hydration, study time and more. There are also sections on activities, goals, and weekly stats. And, it also has a sub-feature 'differentiator', an interactive journal," noted Marwaha.

Marwaha hasn't interacted with Apple engineers yet, but added that he has used the generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) tool --Syntax on Claud from the open source forum of Swift to develop the GuGu app.

Marwaha will soon be flying to Apple's Cupertino HQ to attend the annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2025 (June 9-13). He will be meeting Apple's high-profile executives and get access to all the latest tools which can used to further improve his app.

It should be noted that the company has Apple Developer Centre (formerly known as App Accelerator) in Bengaluru to help budding app developers get all the resources and meet experts one-on-one. It will assist developers improve their applications, and also get mentorship on expanding their business beyond the Indian borders.

Marwaha's immediate goal is to complete the GuGu app and launch it on the Apple App Store as soon as possible.

After his graduation, he plans to do an internship in a good company for two-three years and do Masters in the US. We wish him the very best in his future endeavours.

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