Virtual Scientist

Jan 2017 would mark 8 years of me out of college and about 7 years of following the dream full-time - wanting to connect every institution in the world back to their alumni! That's Awesome!! can be the first reaction. But wait! Is it really? People these days are building startups, raising funding and going places within 2-3 years! “What the hell are you doing?” my best friend taunted me. The question put me in deep thought. As I discovered the connecting dots, I thought it would be good to share them: The journey has been tough, some ups and many downs, but I enjoyed all along the way! When I started, I knew it's not gonna be easy and I was prepared for a long haul. Though I had ideas, I did not have a plan. After spending close to 8 months exploring various thoughts, I decided to work full-time on the idea of Vaave. We started Coherendz in the extra passage space at the guest house of BHUMI (an NGO we volunteered for). The trade off was to manage it for being allowed t...

My friend Arpita asked me to do a one day workshop on Web Development at B.V. Raju Institute of Technology, I obliged. But then came the challenge, I had to teach building websites in a day! Everything I learnt in last 10 years is to be taught in 5 hours! It was tougher than building an awesome website. I realized that being an expert at something also calls for being able to explain it to a newbie in a concise & succinct manner. I took up the challenge and started listing down the skills required to build websites. Technical know-how was definitely required. But for someone who is just starting, the most important skill she needs to know is a different one - The Ability to Copy Code! Copying is a Skill! This realization was very profound! It was how I learnt building websites. In my early undergrad days, I was amused with Javascript, I used to go to Internet Cafe, download source files of various demos from dynamicdrive.com and used to play around with them for hours! Fro...

My friends know that I always claim to be 23 years old :D.  Ok here I admit today,  I am 23 since last 7 years. I formally started the company when I was 23 and ever since my age refused to grow. Today, not sure why, I feel a little old, a little wise. I look into the mirror and see the white hair shouting at me – “Oh Paresh, you entered the Thirties”. That left me wondering – how fast the last 10 years went by? I sat introspecting about my twenties and I could connect the dots looking backwards. I stumbled upon website building Couple of months before I entered 20’s , I stumbled upon a piece of article meant for school kids in a newspaper that showed some basic html code and grabbed my attention. I was introduced to Internet a little earlier by my brother. Net connection at home wasn’t available  those days and so I  saved almost every Html & Javascript tutorial I found and carried them home in Floppy Drive (yes the 1.44 MB ones)...

yes the same seagull in the book “ Jonathan Livingston Seagull ” by Richard Bach that inspires all of us It’s been little more than 5 years since I moved out of college to choose entrepreneurship over placement @ NITIE. I came back to Hyderabad in Jan 2009 with the “Guru” style thought “mai biginess karunga”. Though there were many ideas shortlisted to work on and a little prize money from b-plan competitions, I had no plan laid out. Coherendz was started while in campus and had completed more than 15 projects by then. The idea of alumni portals existed back then, but I wasn’t very particular about choosing a sector. I knew, whatever I work on would be a first step that would prepare me for a long haul, so I started! After 6 months of experimenting with various ideas and decided to pursue building our product – vaave, we setup our fulltime office in November 2009. The first 10 months were so good that made me sometimes wonder why people said: “entrepreneurship is toug...

Reposted from article written for our alumni magazine I was wondering on what I should write about. The alum team approached me to write about my entrepreneurial journey straight after NITIE, however I felt it would be nice if I write something that is of interest to many. I decided to write about my learning's during the attempts in building an organization. It’s been just about 30 months of bootstrapping experience and fewer attempts to build an organization, which is far negligible compared to magnanimity of this subject. I am just trying to pen my thoughts and understanding of what it is. For a quick intro, I moved out of NITIE to take up fulltime job as the business that I had started while I was a student. During early 2009, recession came as an omen for me to take up the entrepreneurial journey, and I got my winter internship papers ready and moved out of campus without informing Pundir sir, our placement dean (frankly I did not have courage to tell this to him). It’...

After the resolve to write my blog regularly, here I am… with my first post on "my pursuit of happiness" About 9 months ago I made the decision to move out of placements looking at the recession, which came as an omen, not to put 'corporate job for one year' even as an option. The omen goes like this… The placements at NITIE that usually took 3 days showed no signs of settlement even after 30 days. The 100% placement record since inception seamed to break with our batch. The two Business Plan contests I won just preceding the placement season augmented to my bank balance, providing seed capital for 8 months sustainance. Mujeeb (President, BHUMI ) had come to mumbai and the 2 year old plan to set up "Lazeez" for bhumi's sustainability moved out of shelves. Dad seamed very supportive and wanted me to find a job in Hyderabad!  and that’s it :) I got my 'internship at BHUMI' letters ready… and I moved to hyderabad without informing our Placeme...

Many at times my friends, colleagues and relatives ask me this question what do you get by doing social service... this is meant for the people who have well settled in their lives... have much time to spend and so do social service to pass their time!!! “you first settle in your life, build up your career then do service to society” is what every one advices me... this made me think, think again and again... that made me to question myself “what did BHUMI give to me?” First thing what BHUMI did was... it made me to think! It made me realize “what I am and what I want to become”... In short it made me realize my true potential; ‘Paresh’ a year back was a procrastinating guy, used to watch movies first day first show, spending most of the time either chit chatting or roaming along the roads; though I used to study simultaneously, Life was never so interesting. BHUMI taught me how to handle things in critical situation... coz, for the whole time I had been with BHUMI, life alwa...