Business Plans are characterized by low shelf life. More so, if the authorship is done on a paper napkin in a Mumbai coffee shop. Pubmatic is case in the counter-point. The 10 year old plan of making ad servers is still alive – and kicking ass. So what makes the company tick? To start with … Read more

Milind Kothari was born and brought up in a small cantonment town in Nasik, Devlali, where he did his schooling. He went on to do his diploma in mechanical engineering from the Government Polytechnic in Jalgaon. Did well in his diploma and was offered a choice of VJTI and COEP to continue his education. He … Read more

While in school, Mayur was looking at doing engineering. Some family members advised that he should look at chartered accountancy. On finishing his 11th standard, he went over to meet the principal of Ness Wadia College. The talk went on to the surname Vora, which is a typical baniya community one. The principal’s comment was: … Read more

Marc’s grandfather and  mother were Indians. He was born in Pune, and schooled in Pune and Germany. After school got done, he came back for a year to work at a farm in Mahableshwar. In this one year he realised the need for an education and so he went back to do his Masters. Carried … Read more

Manoj Meena’s family hails from a village about 30 km from Jaipur. The family is into agriculture, with no business background. The pinnacle of career success for the Meena clan  was getting a government job. By that humble yardstick, Manoj’s dad became a huge success when he landed up a government job and left the … Read more

Manoj Deshpande used to be a colleague of my friend, Prasanna Walimbe, at Infosys. In 2016, inspired by Modi’s Digital India, Manoj turned entrepreneur. His initial entrepreneurship was a weekend one. By 2018, the Minimum Viable Product was ready, and Manoj quit his job as head of Digital and AI business at Opus Consulting to … Read more

Madhukar is the son of a national level hockey player. In contrast to the father Madhukar’s life turned out to be more brain than brawn. He did his Hindi medium schooling in various places in UP, where his dad was posted in the SRPF. When Madhukar was in his class 10, his dad got posted … Read more

Laxman Hemnani is a COEP ‘85 batcher. After finishing his metallurgy engineering, he started off in manufacturing. After a couple of years on the shop floor, he joined Aptech, where he had a long stint of 10 years. He was the manager of the flagship JM road centre of Aptech. In 2002, Aptech decided to … Read more

Harsh is a plain B.Com – and he makes it a sort of USP when he markets himself. The story actually goes that he wanted to go in for higher education, but his dad wanted nothing of it – he was asked to join the family business – Bombay Oil Industries Ltd as soon as … Read more

This time’s thoughts are provoked by one of my school classmate’s brother – Gireendra Kasmalkar. Giri runs a 1500 strong company called SQS – which is into one of the most non-glamourous areas in IT – software testing. Giri did his mech engg from IIT Bombay. Went to the US for his MS, but surprised … Read more