Chetan Singh Solanki grew up in a small village in MP. His dad was a farmer and Chetan’s education till grade 4 was in a single room village school. He shifted from there to Indore for his secondary school education. After finishing his engineering, he went on to do his M.Tech from IIT Bombay. He … Read more

Anantha Annaswamy was the next speaker. He talked about a project that he was associated with in his Medtronic days, Shruti. (https://www.medtronic.com/in-en/about/shruti.html) The aim was to reach out to people staying in slums, who often suffer from ear problems, and don’t realise it. A 3 year old, who continues to have a prolonged cold can … Read more

Shrikant Ingalhalikar is a 1971 product of COEP. Joined Tata Motors (those days Telco) from campus and was part of the third Graduate trainee engineer program at TML. Those days the GTE training used to be an intensive two year program. There was not much manufacturing happening in the Pune plant then. The first person … Read more

Mansoor had a happy childhood. He liked tinkering with gadgets, ended up making a few of his own! All because of a buddy from school. The family owned a farm in Panvel. He used to enjoy planting vegetables there. And Building tunnels. And swimming pools. Most of us believe that Wealth and Brains don’t go … Read more

Vinit is an IT pro, who quit IBM in 2003 to join the BJP team full time. He had an interesting sustenance model – he went to his friends group and asked if they were ready to help him follow his dream. Each of 20 friends decided to contribute 2,000 per month to Vinit to … Read more

Reva was India’s first electric car. It was named after Chetan Maini’s mother. So it was nice to meet another Reva, Reva Malik, who drives a Nexon EV. Reva grew up in the hills of Himachal – and shifted to Bangalore from Chandigarh about 20 years ago together with Ranjan, her husband and their daughter. … Read more

Prof Bandookwala did his Ph.D from the University of Okhlahoma in the 1970’s. At Oklahoma he spent time trying to find particles that can travel faster than light. Einstein was relieved, Bandookwala couldn’t find any such particles, though he did find his Ph.D. He was advised one day by a Catholic Nun, ‘Go back son … Read more

Pravin Bhagwat is an IITK batchmate of Samir Palnitkar. Pravin spent a long time working with the Watson Labs at IBM. He was IBM’s representative in meetings that evolved the wireless standards for the computing industry – the blue tooth. There was a lot of haggling that went on between companies that were involved. And … Read more

The concept of an invitation only private dining restaurant was new to me. So when the Aragma invitation popped up for a midweek dinner, I cancelled whatever I had planned – and landed up at 1830 hrs at the Insignia complex, on Dhole Patil road. Poornima, the brains behind Aragma Food Studio, used to be … Read more

Pune generates 1500 t per day of garbage. 6000 t of waste every day in Mumbai. 65% of it is from residences and hotels. Out of this 9% is plastic. The reason for the shift to plastic is the logistics challenge: Should a manufacturer use 2.5 gm of pouch or 450 gram glass bottle? About … Read more