About
I wear many hats but primarily my interests lie in
Technology
I am an early adopter of technologies having worked across diverse and complex computer systems including embedded systems, networking, large-scale distributed systems and data-processing systems. My first startup was born in college where we hacked bootloaders and wrote a thin-client solution and sold it to small and medium institutions and educational institutions. It was one of the early companies built around Linux support model (back in early 2000s). I then moved on to work on compilers and dev tools (the GCC toolchain) and security and auth systems at Microsoft R&D – Services for Unix team. Weirdly I experimented with various flavours of Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris to be precise) at Microsoft. After the last public release of SFU (it was later absorbed into Windows Vista), I left Microsoft to join Speedera. Speedera was acquired by Akamai where we built a profitable productline for Performance and Media Analytics. My work here was instrumental in building a very resilient, distributed, high-performance internet measurement and analysis network spread over more than 90 datacenters across the world. My work in the area of Performance Metrics helped me win the ISOC fellowship at IETF 75 – the top networking standard conferences. I currently working at Inmobi (one of the largest independent Mobile Ad networks) as a Lead Architect to build large scale data-processing and analytics system.
In addition, I have been active in several technological areas such as ACM and Linux User Groups. I was part of the team that organised the first Barcamp in Bangalore and the first Cloudcamp in Bangalore. I along with several members also revived the ACM Bangalore chapter that has held regular Tech Talks, workshops and ACM Compute – a top rated Computer Science conference in India since 2008. I have also spoken at Foss.in – the top opensource conference in India.
Entrepreneurship
I have mostly worked for small and mid-sized companies as an early employee through my career. Having known first-hand, the pains and the challenges of starting up in India, few of us got together to found a non-profit volunteer-run organization called Headstart. Headstart helps entrepreneurs by helping them get in touch with like-minded entrepreneurs, customers and investors by organising events such as Startup Saturdays (held monthly in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune) and an bi-annual conference called Headstart. Head over to the Headstart site to find out more.
Photography and Travel
I am avid photographer and like to travel (visited 11 countries and counting). My interests like mostly in landscape, travel and documentary-style photography. A Nikon D80 with Nikon 50mm f/1.8 and Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-f/5.6 are my weapons of choice. You can see my photos on Flickr and Picasa.
Disclaimer : The thoughts expressed on my blog are my own and should not be construed as those of my employer or any organization I am affiliated with.