Netrapal Sharma is a second generation entrepreneur. His dad shifted base from Rajasthan to Maharashtra in the seventies – the usual migration-employment story. Couldn’t find a job in Bombay, so he roamed the streets with a kulfi-gaadi. Fate took him from Bombay to the small town of Ichalkaranji. Remembering his good ole days in Bombay, … Read more

Narendra Barhate is an electronics and telecom engineer from COEP who followed it up with an M.Tech from IIT Bombay. He started his career with DRDO, where he worked for more than a decade. Not happy with his career in the government he left in 1994 to lay seeds to his entrepeneurial career. His father, … Read more

After finishing the Electrical Engineering program at IIT Bombay in 1974, Nandu worked in Tata Electric R & D for 3 years. There was a Minz computer which he used to work on during those times. One boring day, he loaded a program and whilst it executed, he decided to use that time to do … Read more

2007 was the inflection point for the IT industry. The high point of that year was the launch of the iPhone. This was soon followed by Android. This marked a beginning of the shift from enterprise to consumer. Since then smart phones have come to dominate. Today we have more smartphones than toilets in India. … Read more

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