Who am I?

I am a 30 year old entrepreneur from Kolkata, INDIA. I have been in business since 1997 and have turned around several successful ventures in the internet service domain. I take pride in the fact that I have grown my ventures organically without any external capital. Besides this I enjoy managing my ventures and this is the reason I never sold a company that I created.

I have done my education from South Point High School. I went on to do my Bachelors in Commerce with Honours in Accountancy from St. Xaviers College, Kolkata. I finally did my MS in Multimedia Technology from University of Bath, UK in 1999-2000.

I have special interest in software engineering, marketing management and strategy planning (this comes with a natural instinct).

I am recipient of Gold Award of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award from HRH Prince Edward during his visit to India in 1997.

About my work / career

I started my career as a part time office assistant in Duke of Edinburgh’s Award - Kolkata Chapter; at an age of sixteen while in high school. I am fortunate that my first experience in professional world was in such a friendly and informal environment. I used to help my seniors in managing organizing events (like trekking trips) and helping award participants in various ways.

When I went to college, I managed to get a job as a Sales Executive in a Direct Sales Agency of CitiBank. It was a totally new experience where I travelled almost all roads, streets and lanes of Kolkata. I used to sell loan accounts against equity and had real fun doing that. I did this for almost one year.

In 1997, I was in college. Internet was new in India and I got hooked to it. I liked what I experienced online and immediately felt that this could be my future. I started earning pocket money by installing internet connections (good old dial-up days) and help people learn how to use internet. Soon I started selling IP telephony. I could see endless possibilities and I started learning about websites and web-servers. I spent few months studying about how internet works and finally started Indus Net Technologies in September of 1997. It started off in my bedroom with a PC, which was gifted by my father.

I went to UK for my higher education in 1999-2000 and my sister looked after my small business which was hosting around 1000+ websites. I got several job offers after my Masters degree, but I decided to return to India to persue Indus Net Technologies.

I struggled for two years due to the global economic slowdown. Fortunately my persistence paid off and in 2002 Indus Net Technologies started growing and managed to hire three employees. I started taking my business seriously. And I continue to do so..

More about my work…

Name of companies: Indus Net Technologies, Indus Net Academy, Customer First
Area of business: Web design, Web development, Internet marketing, E-learning

This year, we are celebrating 10 years of Indus Net Technologies and I have almost 250 full time team members standing with me who work from Kolkata, Chennai and London to supports more than 5000 clients in 40+ countries. I play an active role in the company and act as the top management providing strategic roadmap to my capable management team. I am sure they will keep growing Indus Net Technologies and maintain highest ethical standards while delivering best value for money to thousands of customers worldwide, making it the largest Internet service company in the world by 2015.

Indus Net Technologies is a tightly knitted nuclear organization. It has a centralized management team to deliver strategy, marketing support, sales, account management, quality control, infrastructure support and financial planning.

We have several nuclear teams which are specialized in their area of business and provide professional, high quality service and customer support. Our nuclear teams are agile and customer centric. They innovate and leave no stone unturned to delight our clients. They are flexible as a new exciting business, and still retain the core benefit of dealing with a stable and large organization. Precisely our clients get the best of both worlds! We work as a integrated internet startegy partners to our clients and provide them services through one or more of our ventures!

Our businesses are "logically" and "functionally" divided. They work in the same premises and interact with each other. Therefore collaboration on projects is in fact common in every assignment we take.

Today Indus Net Technologies has the following departments:

• Web design
• PHP / MySQL development
• Internet marketing
• ASP.NET / C# / MS-SQL development (in a spin off called Customer First)
• E-learning (in a spinoff called Indus Net Academy)

I draw my satisfaction from the fact that, till now I have managed to build a medium sized respectable company in a business, which was not recognized as an industry way back in 1997. Even today very few people consider it to be a serious business. I believe that any business can be scaled up to great heights if one has the capability to innovate, create value and think beyond the obvious.

Check out our corporate group website In a recent survey conducted by CNBC-TV18, ICICI Bank and CRISIL, Indus Net Technologies is among the top 40 emerging small and medium sized enterprises in India. Indus Net Technologies has been rated as Top 100 SME in India by CRISIL. We have also been rated as SE-2A i.e. "High Performance, High Financial Strength" organization by CRISIL in their official credit rating.

Some of the brands that I own (which are not spinned off into seperate companies yet) are - design2please, script2please, promote2please, submit2please, content2please, logo2please, templatekingdom, easysiteedit, clickworkforce, dedicated hiring, etc.

What can I offer you?

- A helping hand
- Advice on internet marketing, web design, usability, open source programming
- First hand experience of an entrepreneur and business advise
- Connections in India
- Help in planning your trekking trip in Himalayas

What Do I Want/Need

- Web design / development business
- Connections in corporate world for medium - large outsourcing deals in creative services and/or open source programming services sector
- Practical advice from management experts about managing large scale IT organisation and best practices that they know of

I am also looking forward to buy small and medium sized IT companies in simmilar area of interest in India and/or UK. So if you of any such opportunity, please feel free to recommend that to me.

My hobbies & interests

I have been very active in trekking & hiking between 1991 and 1999. I have participated in 40+ treks and expeditions in various capacities (i.e. member, team lead and instructor)

I have interest in:

Subjects: Vedic mathematics, Software engineering, Marketing, eLearning
Books: Adventure, Mountaineering, Business
Movies: World War II, Bollywood, Any good comedy movie
Games: XBox360

I have spoken on entrepreneurship and open source technologies in several education institutions including IIT-KGP, IIM-Joka, Pailan Institute, ICFAI, IIAS. I take pride in my association with organizations like TiE-Kolkata and NEN of Wadhwani Foundation.

I also actively support Kiva.org due to their innovative way of helping the needy ones!

My family

My family lives in Kolkata.
My family includes my parents, wife and a younger sister (who is happily married).

My father owns and operates his own business of Raw Jute (Star Brand) and Jute Seeds (Kissan Seeds). He is also Chairman of Indus Net Technologies.

Places I have visited so far: