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I love web apps, everything Apple, post-work martinis, good seafood, dark chocolate, coffee, Mumbai city and living well.
I am the founder of DeskAway, a simple yet powerful web-based work tracking tool. DeskAway is ranked in the top 30 hottest startups in India by TataNEN.
Things have worked out kinda well, for instance...recently, I have been named a Paragon 100 Fellow (Asia’s most inspiring young entrepreneurs and social change makers), shortlisted in BusinessWorld's Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs in India, featured on the cover of India Today Aspire (The Young Guns), showcased on CNBC's prestigious TV show 'Young Turk Innovators' and interviewed in VentureBeat and NYTimes by a prominent Silicon Valley journalist.
I am currently working on a book on Web 2.0 & SaaS to be published in late 2010.
I often reminisce about the best 7.5 years spent in Chapel Hill, NC.
When not in front of the computer, I spend my time reading, writing, playing golf, tennis (am a Federer fan), doing yoga thrice a week, and traveling to distant places (love Mykonos and the rest of the Med. coast) with my wife and family.
I believe in doing what you enjoy even if it is different and doesn't pay you well in the beginning. Setting off on your path is more important than following the herd. It is extremely important to be happy at the end of each day.
This is an updated stream of my work+life activities of a life in progress.
Time blocking is a technique I used while writing my book. I would finish all office work before 2pm and then either seclude myself in my cabin or head to the Kala Ghoda Cofee shop to write till about 6pm. This helped me prioritize DeskAway stuff every day (since I now did not have all day to mull over certain things) and give only importance to the things that mattered!
In its second year, Businessworld's unique initiative for showcasing young and promising entrepreneurial talent in India, the Promising Entrepreneur Awards 2010, received a total of 112 applications.
Entrepreneurs from across the country, under the age of 35 and some as young as 19, sent us applications detailing their business ideas. We put together an eminent screening committee, comprising venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, to evaluate the 112 applications and come up with a shortlist of 30 finalists.
These 30 young start-ups and their founders will now be evaluated by a separate six-member jury comprising prominent entrepreneurs, investors and other experts. Five winners will be chosen by the jury and announced later. Till then, get acquainted with the 30 finalists.
30 Finalists in alphabetical order:
Ankit Maheshwari, Nandini Maheshwari
Citizen MediaAnmol Singh Jaggi
Gensol ConsultantsAnshumaan V, S Shilly Babu
Beans & IntellectAnurag Kedia, Saurabh Garg, Sunil Rao
CMYK Health BoutiqueBikash Barai, Nilanjan De
iViz Techno SolutionsBirendra Bisht
QMRGagan Goyal, Abhishek Biswal
TRI TechnosolutionsGanesh Ram KR, Saravanan N
Mobile VedaGyanesh Pandey, Ratnesh Yadav, Charles Ransler, Manoj Sinha
Husk Power SystemsIrfan Alam
Samaan FoundationJoby Joseph
Freshersworld
Komal Talwar, Jitin Talwar
Talwar & TalwarKranthi Kiran Vistakula
Dhama Apparel InnovationsManoj Vasudevan
SourcePilaniMukesh Bansal, Sankar Bora
Myntra DesignMurli Ramkrishnan, Smita Thorat
Horizon InfoPankaj Agarwal, Sushan Rungta
Clickindia InfomediaPavan Goyal
Blue BlocksRaghu Khanna
CashurDriveRajamanohar, Vijay Pahlajani
Hexolabs Media and TechnologyRuchi Chopra
Any Surprise Any PlaceRudrajeet Desai, Saurabh Khullar, Maninder Gill
Ideacts InnovationsSahil Parikh, Sitanshi Parikh
Synage SoftwareSawan Laddha
Splash IndiaVaibhav Kaley, Nachiket Kaley
Wonder Grass InitiativeVamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain
Lakshya InstituteVigyan Gadodia
SahajVipul Arora, Sonali Arora
Solaron TechnologiesVishal Borker, Sameer Naik, Sudarshan Borker
Nextbit ComputingVivek Iyer
White Smyle
Pick your winners. Vote here
We made it to the top 30!
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Project management has entered a new era in the last few years. It is less about planning and organizing and more about collaborating and communicating. At the heart of this is using sophisticated online tools that will give disparate teams the power to organize, manage, and track their projects from anywhere. Project management tools will behave just like your social network where you communicate, plan events, and collaborate with friends and family through your Web browser. Your project team members are now just a click away!
This is an article on project management and DeskAway I wrote for a magazine in Philippines.
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This is an article I wrote for Management Systems Asia magazine in November 2009. Check out the web version of it here -
Project management has entered a new era in the last few years. It is less about planning and organizing and more about collaborating and communicating. At the heart of this is using sophisticated online tools that will give disparate teams the power to organize, manage, and track their projects from anywhere. Project management tools will behave just like your social network where you communicate, plan events, and collaborate with friends and family through your Web browser. Your project team members are now just a click away! Read More
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Within the last year we have been fortunate to get really good PR/Buzz for DeskAway and me. This led to increase in traffic on the site, more signups and eventually more conversion to paid accounts i.e. customers. Somehow, one thing led to another and as more people heard about what we were doing (and I believe we are building a SaaS business at the right time) it snowballed into more interviews and blog reviews. Somehow, there was/is no magic formula to get PR (definitely don't hire a PR agency early on) though this article (10 reasons why journalists will write about your website) lays down some important points to keep in mind. I think we just participated - in blogs, social media tools, content creation, industry events, seminars, barcamps, etc.
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I love it when DeskAway gets written about on blogs and then the viral nature of the Internet spreads the article to Twitter and other aggregator sites. Signups start rolling in (provided your target audience matches), the site gets incoming links (good SEO) and more people know about the tool (leading to WOM). The latest review last night, is on Smashing Apps, which boasts a half million RSS subscribers and 2000+ Twitter followers. Their target audience of web designers/ developers are amongst the top 5 types of people that use DeskAway currently. In the coming days we will know how many people came to the site, signed up and converted.
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