Product Pioneer

Shridhar’s dad used to work with the Posts and Telegraphs department. Dad was a family educationist of sorts. Shridhar’s grandfather was not well educated. His dad was the eldest of 10 kids. He took responsibility for getting all of them educated. And then there were dad’s own three kids: Shridhar and his two elder sisters. … Read more

Running a Data Center

Bombay lad. Got his first internship to computers in his uncle’s company – Applied Electromagnetics, a Delhi based company, which worked on rugged computers. Btw, the uncle’s partner was the current CM of Maharashtra, Prithwiraj Ghorpade, his uncle’s classmate at Berkeley. Liked computers –  went on to IIT Bombay 85-89 EE batch. Was the first … Read more

Tasty Khana

Shachin Bhardwaj was your typical IT engineer, a bachelor who stayed back late to enjoy dinner on company account. The atypicality was in applying his IT skills to structure the offerings of all the delivery and take-away joints in Pune. What started off as an Excel sheet which was shared on mail with colleagues morphed … Read more

Pune’s Township Czar

Satish Magar grew up in a farmer’s family – in the city of Pune. Their village (now Magarpatta) was a very unique geographical island. Bounded on three sides by roads – and on the last by a railway line, the families have stayed together – and in harmony. Satish’s own family is a joint one … Read more

Steam Miner

After his education at St Joseph’s, Khadki, Samuel Abraham went on to do his BSc in Chemistry at Nowrosjee Wadia College. Those days there was a one year PG course in petroleum which Sam enrolled for. Almost immediately after the completion of that course, Sam got a contract job with ONGC on their rig. If … Read more

Money Games

TiE talk by Roby John, Tap 2 learn, Oct 2013 Roby John is a mechanical engineer from COEP, batch of 1999. He was the gold medalist in college – moved on to a higher education program, but did not like it and dropped out. He has a flair for teaching, and he has taught for … Read more

Ranga Bodavala

Ranga Bodavala was born into an agricultural family in Guntur. Wanted to be an engineer, but his farmer-dad, who is also a trained cost accountant, made the young Ranga do his B.Com. An MBA from Andhra University followed, where Ranga got both his naukri and chokri. He met his better half here. He joined Administrative … Read more

Eat, Pray and Shit

Rajeev’s dad was in the army and mom was a university professor. Rajeev did his MBA from Symbiosis and landed up with a job in Canada. Found that quite boring, so came back to India with the specific intention of becoming an entrepreneur. One thing he was sure of – the field would be off-beat. … Read more

Kirana se Sona

Tikaram Jagannath became a Colgate Palmolive distributor way back in 1949. And for the next 55 years, the family continued its long association with FMCG distribution: adding Britannia, Reckitt and Colman, Ciba Geigy, Amul – and finally the icing on the cake, Hindustan Lever in 1996. In 2005, after having worked full time for 15 … Read more

Math in Tech

We started by meeting with Pravin’s better half, who also works with him. She did her schooling from Jnyan Prabhodini. Then went on to do her law and also her MBA. She looks after legal complainces and HR at the company. With 250 people in the team, I asked her what her biggest challenge was. … Read more