My IIT experience started before I even set foot on campus with a crash course at the, then, well known Agarwal Classes. Having completed my Senior Cambridge exams, which in those days were in December, I thought I had six months of freedom before attending any college. Visions of lying in bed till noon were dashed and one schlepped to the classes daily (I think). It was there that I first met the merry band of pranksters that would become friends for life, through IIT and beyond. I still remember the day the Agarwal teacher was locked out of the class by one of rowdies.
While academics at IIT were rigorous, I quickly learned to pick the areas that interested me rather than chase after grades. I put in enough effort to get by and focused on the interesting subjects like Prof Isaac’s computer class that was taught as one of our electives, or the mathematics class by Prof Vartak, or Heat Transfer by Prof Sukhatme. All of them would help me later more than the other subjects did.
Of course, the most memorable moments happened outside the classroom. The merry pranksters from Agarwal also wound up at Hostel 2 resulting in more hijinks. From chasing a cow into a dorm room, to smuggling a Liebig condenser stuffed down one’s trousers to distil liquor, from taking a midnight bike ride to Santa Cruz airport on a dare to walking the pipeline to the lake on lazy afternoons, those were the memories that one recalled later as we met. As Ashok Kalbag mentioned, the two of us were teetotalers then and, ironically, were the only ones fingered as drunks by irate PGs when our boisterous end of semester celebrations disturbed their mugging for their exams. I had to explain my way out of that mess.
I was lucky to get into MIT’s management program and eventually talked my way into the Mechanical Department with the help of a letter of recommendation from Prof. Sukhatme. The Graduate Dean, Prof Rosenhow, was Prof. Sukhatme’s advisor at MIT and he took one look at the letter and felt it was good enough for him to admit me. My work at MIT opened my eyes to the future capabilities of the emerging computer field. I jumped at an opportunity to join the nascent information systems practice at Booz Allen, my first job after graduation. From there I spent a decade building consulting teams in the emerging niche of information systems consulting at Booz Allen, Digital and Microsoft.
I realized after working at large corporations that I didn’t like the status quo. I dove into the startup world where things keep changing constantly. I was fortunate again to be at the leading edge as technologies unfolded around us. Helped Electronic Book Technologies, one of the pioneers in digital markup, and the inspiration for HTML and the Web, with the earliest internet documentation servers; at Be Free, I led the product management team for one of the first online advertising platforms; and at Vaultus, helped launch the earliest mobile application platform for the then dominant Blackberry PDA.
My final chapter was completely different. Feeling increasingly concerned about how technology was changing human behavior, I wanted to do something more socially impactful. I had been mentoring startups in the robust Boston and Cambridge university ecosystem. I soon realized that this younger generation graduating from college was more socially responsible and concerned. Many student startups were looking at new models to address social issues. I decided to focus on this new breed of social entrepreneurs and found that there was no structured support for such ideas. Pitching a concept of a ‘social incubator’ to help nurture these ideas brought me to Desh Deshpande, a successful technologist, who now was looking at his own social impact.
Desh and his wife, Jaishree, convinced me to join their family foundation and together I was able to help them launch several centers focused on social and technological innovation and entrepreneurship. After over a decade with the foundation, I finally retired in 2023.
Together with my wife, Shiamin, who I met when she visited her brother and my IIT buddy, Ajay, we spend our time traveling the world, visiting our two daughters, and our granddaughter, Savina. Anu, our eldest, lives in Chicago with her husband, Jack, daughter Savina, a cat and a lazy Great Dane. Ambika and Mike are in Seattle with their menagerie of cats and a German Shepherd.
While the classes at IIT laid a firm technical foundation, one could not imagine then the rapid technology changes that the future had in store. Challenging class assignments and the freedom to innovate outside the classroom, freed my thinking and made me unafraid to take on the unknown. In life, each time I faced an inflection point, I gladly chose the lesser-known path looking forward to the excitement of new ideas and new adventures.
IIT Bombay 1974 Reunion 