We all know Elon Musk as a twitter-active personality. From sharing snippets from his life to sharing his opinions on important matters, he is seen using social media platforms regularly. But an Indian techie Pranay Pathole, was in for a surprise when his tweet in 2018 garnered a prompt reply from the Tesla honcho.

Pranay, who was an engineering student in his second year, had tweeted about a problem with Tesla’s automatic windscreen wipers. This attracted a prompt reply from Elon Musk stating “Fixed in next release”. According to Pranay, “When Elon responded to me for the first time, that was the highlight of my life. But now my interactions with him have become very casual. We talk back and forth through Direct Messages (DMs) on Twitter.”

Describing his online friend as super-friendly, he also states that the automaker chief has no qualms about his status. He is extremely Twitter-active and responds in within minutes, whenever Pranay messages him, which he does quite regularly. Their conversations range over a variety of topics like making human life multi-planetary, why is going to Mars so important and even Musk’s upbringing and early days.

It doesn’t feel like you are interacting with the world’s richest person. To me, it feels like you are just hanging out with another buddy of yours,” he adds.

According to Pranay, Elon Musk trusts his own reasoning above conventional wisdom, and that is what inspires him. Pranay works as a software developer at TCS and has a fan following of more than 1 lakh on Twitter. His pinned tweet about Mars, to which Musk had responded, has received 28K retweets and some 138K likes. In future Pranay would love to pursue a Master’s degree from US, and of course work at his buddy’s, if given a chance.