Vasu is a first generation entrepreneur. He did his civil engg from COEP – as it was the easiest to get in. Joined corporate life immediately thereafter. When after 7 years of work, he had accumulated enough capital, he decided to buy an apartment. He found the building quality extremely shoddy, the builder attitudes to … Read more

Vandana was born in London to Indian immigrant parents. She grew up being very interested in Marine Geography, but her very conventional dad have her 3 career choices: Doctor, Lawyer or Accountant. Vandana started off life as a radio jockey on a series of Asian radio stations, while she was at university. Her shows became … Read more

Mohit Gundecha and Suruchi Wagh studied at COEP. Mohit is a Marwadi from Ahmednagar, Suruchi a Maratha from Aurangabad. Suruchi is a year junior to Mohit and they first met when they worked together in Abhiyanta, the COEP college magazine. Mohit left COEP immediately after his bachelors to do his Masters in Management and Engineering … Read more

Surinder’s family shifted post partition to India from what is now PoK. He was born in Delhi in 1947, where his father had shifted to, post partition. Surinder did his schooling in Srinagar and then went on to do his BSc in Botany at Science College, Jammu. Followed that up with an MSc in Cytology. … Read more

Walked to Pune station, Reached in under an hour – thanks to bag being light. DQ was on platform 4, so did not have to use the pedestrian overbridge. Metro was running at 0645 hrs. Vistadome experience was good. Spent an hour in the rear gallery watching the tracks and the scenery. Met with an … Read more

Growing Carrots with the Stick Srinivasa Sajja graduated from BITS Pilani  and stayed on for 4 years as a teaching assistant. He then joined IIM Calcutta for his fellow program. He had got married by them. Did not realise that his better half was also staying on the campus during the time we were there. … Read more

Srikrishna Karkare, an IIT Bombay alumnus, spent his formative years at Thermax. He quit in 1988 to start a small trading concern for the chemical and allied industry. His wife Alka, who is also his batchmate from IIT Bombay, continued working with Praj, and was the family financial pillar in the formative years of Enpro. … Read more

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

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

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