Chicken Counter

Appukutan Vidyasagar wanted to be an engineer. But, he came from a family with limited means. Vidya proposed doing a diploma. But dad was not happy with the idea of Vidya spending the rest of his life on the shopfloor. Dad’s wisdom was that it would be best that Vidya works in offices, preferably government … Read more

Handling Pressure

Very few companies last three generations. The luck of the genes seems to be with the Hirlekars in that sense. And also a sense of being with the times. The Senior Hirlekar, the 1st generation, started manufacturing spring movements for dials. His son, our contemporary, Annirudha of COEP 83 batch, pivoted the business to magnetic … Read more

Cable Czar

Anil is not just the founder of Elcab, he is also the founder and main cheerleader of our COEP Mech 90 group. If there is any batch gathering or talk happening at any place, one can rest assured Anil is part of it. How he manages to lead such an active social and business life … Read more

The Cool Guy

Anant Joshi is the youngest of three brothers. Dad worked with ARDE. Mom was a housewife. Most of his early life was in government quarters in Aundh and Pashan – incidentally a location that he still continues to stay in. His dad retired in 1990, around the time we completed our engineering.    Unlike today, … Read more

Letting go of Persistent

Anand did his engineering from IIT KGP. He is 59 years old, so I assume he would have finished around 1983. Went on to do his PhD from the US. Worked a few years with HP in the Valley. One fine morning, in what most of his friends labelled as a bout of stupidity, he … Read more

Pickle Riddle

The year was 1962. Hukumichand Chordia had been written off as a serial failure. Every business he tried had been doomed. After a dozen attempts at entrepreneurship across multiple cities, he shifted base to Pune. And that is when he discovered the real entrepreneur in the family: his wife, Kamal. Like most housewives of the … Read more

Bamboo Badshah

Was visiting with my Biogas friend Priyadarshan at his Nere farm. Saw some new bamboo planted. Priyadarshan mentioned that he had got the saplings from a nursery in Chinchwad, which only stocks bamboo. We got curious and the cycling group went over to Chinchwad. Just opposite the Tata Motors Chinchwad Foundry main gate is Gawade … Read more

School Land

The trustees of an upcoming school in Nasik have been looking for land to set up the school. The proposed school will be affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education based out of Delhi. The board has a requirement of 2 acres of land. The budgets are very limited – and the strategy for … Read more

PlugHR

I attended a session by Prashant Bhaskar, who runs a company called PlugHR at The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) for short. Here is an excerpt from the invite – Prashant Bhaskar started the plugHR idea after market research suggested that it won’t take off.“entrepreneurs want challenges, it couldn’t be more challenging than that”, he says. “After … Read more

Organ Donor

You are the head of one of the branches of a hospital chain. A 42 year old patient is bought in. He was on his way to drop his wife to her workplace when his motorcycle collides with that of a Police Sub Inspector. Patient has had internal head injuries. When he is got to … Read more