“Design has been part of me from day one”: Rakesh Mondal, Founder,DesignMyTemplate

Love and passion for creativity makes us do weird things and it also motivates us to go that extra mile, even when the fuel indicator reads ‘empty’!

Rakesh Mondol’s story is a perfect example of this. He did his schooling from a village in West Bengal called Taki, which is about 76 kilometers from Kolkata. He discontinued further studies after 12th standard.

“I learnt painting and drawing in school and got hooked to it. The love for design was imbued in me during those days,” said Rakesh.

He started his career from a computer hardware store, where he used to assemble PCs. Later, he joined a new software consultancy company in Bhutan. The company shifted base to Kolkata and Rakesh shifted as well.

Rakesh worked at InSync for 6 years and during this period, he handled a number of different roles. Right from domain hosting & selling to web designing & development, Rakesh did it all. For a while he was even part of the SAP Business One ERP team at InSync.

“Finally, I felt that this is not something I can do for the rest of my life. Design has been part of me from day one and I wanted to follow my passion for a change,” said Rakesh.

At the time when Rakesh left his job, his child was 6 months old and it was a really difficult decision that he had to make. The twin challenges of starting his entrepreneurial journey and ensuring that his family did not face any difficulties were daunting.

He tried working as a freelance designer for a while, post quitting his job. But, being an unknown entity, very few assignments came his way. He also tried sourcing work from the internet. This is when he realized that he needed to project professionalism and in order to do that he needed to formally set up a business entity. That is how, about a year back, Rakesh founded DesignMyTemplate.

With time,DesignMyTemplate started attracting some great client and also investor interest. Rakesh’s earlier employer, Atul Gupta, MD of InSync, also showed interest in investing in DesignMyTemplate and he accepted the offer.DesignMyTemplate has already worked with clients like WDCA.ca (Canada), Perfecto (Brazil), eclicks (Newzealand), Tremble Digital (Australia), icreon (United Kingdom), fgfanatics (USA), EmployeeStreet.com (Hyderabad), Khumbu Information Systems (Hyderabad) and Hotel EllBee (Delhi).

Only Design | No Coding

Designing and writing the HTML code for a website are two separate tasks, requiring separate tools and skills. The DesignMyTemplate team is very particular about this. “We at DesignMyTemplate.com believe that forcing designers to write HTML and CSS codes as well as design leads to inferior quality of designs.Imagine you are building a house. Sure, you might be able to find someone who can put the whole thing together, but you would be far more comfortable if you hired specialist architects, carpenters and plumbers to work on your home.It is the same with building a web site - those who specialize in pushing pixels on Photoshop don’t necessarily have the skills to turn their designs into HTML code. Some do, but most don’t,” concluded Rakesh.

Website: http://www.designmytemplate.com/