Overview
- The video posted by Abhijay Arora Vuyyuru on Sunday showed him video-calling his mother and revealing her photograph on a giant billboard in New York’s Times Square while she watched and smiled.
- In the post he described a long path of setbacks and milestones, saying he failed the IIT entrance in 2012, graduated in 2016 without a job, won a hackathon in 2017, persisted through multiple GMAT attempts and business-school rejections, gained admission to Harvard in 2022, and received a Google U.S. offer in 2025.
- Multiple Indian outlets circulated the clip and quoted his caption and video, with at least one publication explicitly noting it relied on user-generated social media content and had not independently verified the claims.
- The story drew widespread positive reaction online as a personal gesture of gratitude and as a visible symbol of upward mobility for an immigrant tech worker from Panchkula, Haryana.
- The episode highlights how social platforms can amplify intimate moments into national stories and raises routine verification questions for reporters who rely on a subject’s own posts for primary evidence.