Imagine you were supposed to go on a date with the perfect match and they turned up 500 days late.
That's essentially what happened when Tinder - the world's biggest online dating app - was paired up with tech genius Ishan Khanna.
Bosses at the global firm swiped right when they saw the 25-year-old's ridiculously impressive CV and headhunted him to become part of their software engineering team in Los Angeles.
Ishan, a multi award-winning app developer and international tech speaker, was hot on their radar following his ground-breaking work on apps for online travel agency firm Booking.com, a car-sharing app called Getaround, and a news summary app called Inshorts.
Typically, software engineers from India who work on an H-1B have to enter a lottery system and hope for the best especially if you don't have a master's degree.
But with Ishan's mark on the tech world in his early 20s, his employer applied for an 0-1 visa, which is granted to 'individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement'.
After the company's lawyers got the visa approval. Ishan prepared to pack his suitcase for the States...and then a disaster struck.
"By the time the job offer came in 2020, lockdowns were beginning to happen," he explained.
"Fast forward exactly 500 days and I finally managed to get the visa stamp, flights booked and moved to the US. I got the job offer in December 2019 - and finally started in April 2021."
"It's funny looking back on it now because I don't know why Tinder waited that long for me to arrive."
Making West Hollywood your home and playing a lead role with a global app company is definitely an unlikely story for any young boy who grew up in New Delhi with no iPhones, tablets, or fancy technology in the household for the majority part of his life.
Ishan's first experience with a mobile phone, which would become such a big part of his world, was when his parents got an old Samsung device complete with antenna - and an average downloading time of 10 minutes.
Always fascinated with technology, gadgets and computers, Ishan got his hands on his first computer aged 12 in the summer of 2006, paid for by his grandfather.
While his parents and friends thought he was busy playing games, Ishan began teaching himself tech programming and making websites.
So engrossed with everything that encompassed computers throughout his teenage years, Ishan got disappointing marks for most subjects at school and failed to make the grade for any of the top universities in India.
What none of his teachers realised was that they had a tech prodigy on their hands.
"I had to settle for a less well-known course, which was for three years and not really a professional degree per se," explained Ishan.
"But one month into the course I realized that whatever computer science they're going to teach us in those three years, I was already way beyond that.
"And because of the way I was answering questions to the professor, she called me aside one day and said, 'look, I don't think this course is suitable for you. You should really drop out and do something else, or get into another college if you can.'
When he enrolled into an engineering program, it was a case of different place, same scenario. In the first semester, Ishan quickly realised that his knowledge about software and skills were way past anything the course would teach.
Increasingly disinterested with his studies, Ishan started writing apps instead and began taking on freelance projects. He eventually landed an internship with microfinance organisation Mifos Initiative under the Google Summer of Code program and later went onto become a project management committee member with global organisation Apache Software Foundation.
Ishan said: "The way I like to learn is I like to dive into things really quickly, and I love problem solving. I consider myself highly entrepreneurial and creative. So, whenever there's a problem to be solved, I just like to dive right in and learn on the go."
As his tech freelancing experience increased and he gained recognition within the developer ecosystem, Ishan started getting bombarded with projects on Freelancer.com, and through various social media websites wherever people could reach him.
Eight years on, Ishan has become a widely-recognised Google Developer Expert for Android, delivers unique app engineering talks at tech conferences all over the globe, and leads up the safety experience team at Tinder who are dedicated to ensuring the online safety of its 75 million monthly active users.
When he finally arrived at his job 500 days later, Tinder colleagues were quick to let him know their feelings about being stood up.
"When I would be speaking to my workmates for the first time and explaining all the issues with the visa and lockdown, they'd be like, 'oh so you're the guy' or 'we kept being told someone was joining our team every couple of months, but then we never saw you.'"
Ishan finally showed up for Tinder, for the world of tech...and for his grandfather who bought him his first computer 16 years ago.
