[Techie Tuesdays] 13 techies who are redefining the new age startups and activism in India
![[Techie Tuesdays] 13 techies who are redefining the new age startups and activism in India](https://images.yourstory.com/cs/wordpress/2015/04/Techie-Tuesdays-Roundup.jpg?mode=crop&crop=faces&ar=2%3A1&format=auto&w=1920&q=75)
For past two years, we have been bringing to you the best of geeks and techies around the country and world through our Techie Tuesdays column. Here's a roundup of 13 Techie Tuesdays which we have covered in the first quarter of 2015. These include the likes of techies who head technology at InMobi and Myntra, to the activists and torch bearers of free software movement and AAP. Read on to find out what makes them tick.
Shamik Sharma is a man of calculated words, visibly carrying two decades of experience and wisdom with him. The CTO and CPO of Myntra is more than a computer scientist heading product and technology at the fashion ecommerce company.
There are people who hold on to an idea for a really long time; and then get back to it one day. They drop whatever they were doing and return to finish this unfinished business. Harishankaran Karunanidhi is one such person. Hari, as he is fondly known, is the co-founder of HackerRank(previously known as InterviewStreet), and heads its India office.
Born in Meerut, Rajat spent most of his time in Delhi, and belongs to the city of hills, Dehradun. Here's the story of Rajat Bansal, CTO, Hike who is on a mission to bring a billion people online.
Madhu is the co-founder of GuitarStreet which went on to become a leading e-commerce music store. He single handedly built the entire framework called Flubber in PHP for GuitarStreet. Later, he moved on from GuitarStreet to start another platform Augment where they are bringing the capabilities of IFTTT inside email to organize emails in a better way. At present, Augment supports Evernote, Trello, Asana and Google calendar without leaving your inbox.
Vikram Vincent is an educational technology consultant and an activist who leaves no stone unturned when it comes to freedom of information and equal rights. He is also a fitness trainer and a shotokan karate martial artist. Vikram is not a coder but the way he has helped nurture the free software ecosystem in the country is awe inspiring. He is one of the founding members of Free Software Movement Karnataka.
Rajat is the VP of Engineering at Urban Ladder. In this Techie Tuesdays story, we write about 'How this Open Source enthusiast climbed up ‘Urban Ladder’.
To find a generic way to inject code in applications, Subho developed the AFE (Android Framework for Exploitation)similar to Metasploit for Android. Along with his friends, Harshit Agarwal and Prateek Panda, he started Appknox. Apart from finding security loopholes, Subho has developed the instant messaging extension for Joomla. He has also been fixing issues in the ghost blogging platform of Node.js.
At present, Subho is helping with the Androguard project which is a Python tool to play around with Android apks.
Born and brought up in Delhi, Akshay loved physics more than anything else and wanted to be a mechanical engineer. But destiny had other plans for him and he ended up taking Computer Science engineering in Indraprasth University. Today, Akshay is the CTO of AboutNumber – a startup which brings rapportive to your mobile phone.
Vinodh is an AAP Volunteer and has helped extensively in their Bangalore campaigns. At present Vinodh is the CTO and MD of Bloomreach India. Vinodh spent six years at Google before he decided to startup. He is the techie who persuaded Marissa Mayer and created a better Google News.
Monica Rastogi is the Co-founder of Tapcibo, a food delivery startup which makes sure you don’t have to tap more than three times to order your food. Monica takes care of technology at Tapcibo. Born and brought up in Delhi, where her father was teaching in Cambridge school, she got her first exposure to computers in high school. While everyone was taking up options like theatre, Monica chose computers and has been programming ever since. Here's the story of 'How motherly instinct of Monica Rastogi led her to become an Android expert'.
Mohit Saxena is one of the busiest people you’ll ever meet. It was easier to interview Bjarne Stroustrup, the Inventor of C++. It took us four rounds of scheduling and cancelling before we could get to the interview. Finally, we met for lunch at Aloft in Cessna Business park where got to know more about the Co-founder and VP of Technology at InMobi and all we can say is that it was worth the wait.
From the streets of Lucknow to building one of the largest adtech companies in the world.
Rani, who lost her father at 12 had a difficult upbringing in a small village in Andhra Pradesh. One day, her maternal uncle, who was visiting them, found Rani studying till midnight under dim light produced by a 25 watt bulb. With his help, Rani got admitted into computers, and everything changed. Today a hard corde techie, Rani is the founder and CEO of Dream Tekis Software Pvt Ltd.
Amitava Ghosh, CTO at TaxiForSure, has been a veteran in the industry and has been through the ups and downs of it. He has worked in places of all sizes and technologies.