Ankit Vyas's Interview

Name: Ankit Vyas.
Info.:  Co-founder & COO , OIZOM Instruments Pvt. Ltd.
He's Master in Product Design (National Institute of Design), Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (GCET, SPU)
He's a professional product designer with 4 years of business experience. He's practicing product design in his design consultancy Cosire Innovations. He has experience working on various types of products like consumer electronics, medical products, appliances, instruments, machines etc. he's journey of Cosire opened vigor to explore and innovate radicle ideas to make it reality.






Q1. What is oizom ?.

OIZOM is our initiative of working in the area of natural resources. We have started with air-quality, the next big thing against humanity. We have developed air-quality monitors and purifiers for indoor and outdoor spaces.

Q2. How you such an idea ?

Oizom originated from self-realization of the pollution in our city-Ahmedabad.

Q3. Do you earn from it ? If so , what is the revenue model ?

We have installed 40 solar-air-quality monitors in Delhi. We are selling products as per client's requirements and specification. We are earning out of it.

Q4. How frequently the information about pollution level updates ?

We can adjust the frequency from every 5 Min to once a day.

Q5. What is the source of the information ? Is it your own analysis or you outsourced it ?

We have our own analytics platform called "OIZOM Terminal". It provides reports, charts, analytics, notifications etc. as per user's need.

Q6. What is the role of Oizom in one's life ? 

Oizom touches life of every human being by realizing and improving air-quality of their surroundings. Oizom is an initiative related to healthcare of every human being.

Q7. What is your target audiance/users ?

We have B2B segments like industries, hospitals, offices and B2C customers as our target audience. We are also approaching government for out-door devices.

Q8. How it all started ? Who all helped you out ? What is the story from ground level ?

Founders : Ankit, Vrushank and Sohil know each other from a long time. Being a part of the maker community, we use to discuss about the professional projects  whenever we meetup. We all use to work on novel concepts and products to make some difference to some people or problem. But we were always keen to solve much bigger problem. A problem, which applies to everyone; irrespective of gender, location, cast, breed anything ! We had a ‘Life Centric’ approach in mind. Something relevant to humans, animals, birds, plants and mother earth. In short “We wanted to make the world ACTUALLY a better place”.
We came down to the fundamental basics of life that is Air, Water and Food. We do not consider air-quality as a problem as we can not see Air. Thus ’Making air visible through technology’ became our first agenda. Air-diagnostic Product came into our first agenda. We started conceptualising Air-diagnostic Products for every possible scenarios. Oizom has personal, indoor and outdoor air-quality monitors developed and market ready.

Vinay Menon & Priyanka Bajaj

Name: Vinay Menon (left).
Info.: Founder at IVDisplays Digital Services Pvt Ltd and MeraTiffin. He's a Post Graduate Diploma in Marcom from St.Saviers Collegiate, Kolkata. having  leadership roles with Calcutta Yellow Pages in its formative years driving revenue and growth, he launched b2b.Sulekha.com in Kolkata. Delivered more than 60 IT consulting projects.
Name: Priyanka bajaj (right).
Info.:  Co Founder at IVDisplays Digital Services Pvt Ltd a Commerce Graduate , Digital Marketing Geek, Avid learner. She Manages Operations at Meratiffin. Founding and Key member in implementation for MeraTiffin.

Q1. What is MeraTiffin ?

Meratiffin is a food delivery platform for home cooked food. It curates menu from home chefs, home based caterers, hobbyist and professional chefs and makes them available on Android Devices. Our location based algorithm allows a user to view, compare, select, order and pay from their mobile device for meal of their choice in their neighborhood.

Q2. How you got the idea ? 

1.2 Billion People and 1.2 billion opportunities in food. With people consuming food 3 times a day, food is the way to go. Working folks are pressed for time, they hardly have time to cook and hence fail to carry lunch box, Singles and folks living alone are the most needy for home cooked food, the opportunity always existed, it was just a matter of time. Healthy, safe and affordable Food delivered on Premise is our USP.

The Start: 

We had developed robust software's on Mobile Phones for our customers while delivering consulting projects, we always had captive software development capabilities. It was just a matter of time that we moved from consulting to managing our own Product and projects. And Meratiffin got evolved.

Startup story of MeraTiffin:

Meratiffin was developed to enable our users discover good healthy home cooked food in their neighborhood. Our user can place an order within 10 seconds and in 3 taps. We are incubated at Nasscom 10K startups in Kolkata.

Q3. What is your Office culture ?

We operate out of Nasscom Warehouse in their Incubation centre. We will be having our own office soon.
Smart Casuals in thinking and attire. We are pretty laid back but when it comes to customer delight we make no compromises. All customer quests are answered under 5 mins. Our culture is aligned to meet these goals.

Q4. Do you take Interns ?

Yes we do take interns. We look at content and communication skills as the prime criteria. We also look at creative side of interns when evaluating them for a suitable fit with us.

Q5. Tell us about your Referral program ?

We have a campaign called "Hum Saath Saath hain". Our users invites another user to our App, the moment a new referee joins our App, 7% discount is credited to their account (on the app) which can redeemed on their first purchase at meratiffin. When the referee makes a purchase, the referrer also get 7% discount on the account. A user keeps referring more users and earns more credit. 7 in Hindi is Saat and this is how we have coined "Hum Saath Saath hain"

Q6. How MeraTiffin Differs from Zomato , Foodpanda , Tinyowl , Tiffin Treat ?

None of the above mentioned Food Tech companies are delivering home cooked food and does not work on food discovery nearby. Tiffin Treat we are yet to evaluate but the concept should be good if they are in tiffin delivery services.

Q7. How hard was it for you to reach at this level ? 

Extremely hard to get where we are today and we understand that the journey is long and bumpy.

Ups and Downs :

When we discussed the possibilities of making such a service available to our users, they were ecstatic, that was a big plus and it really helped us to get attention of our users. Convincing Home Chefs and Home based professionals to list with us was a challenge. Discovering them was a big problem and still is. They do not have a customer facing brick and mortar outlet. Delivery management and Quality consistency is also something we are working jointly to get a uniform taste across. Packaging is another concern. We understand that we need to consistently work with our Kitchen partners and we are upto it all the time.

Q8. Share a WOW! moment in your startup journey of MeraTiffin.

Our first order on the App was a WoW! moment and it went well, start to finish. Getting selected at Nasscom was a WoW! too. We were part of the winning team at "Egiye Bangla" a start up reality show aired on Zee Bangla on prime time. Connecting with so many industry veterans and experts is a WoW.

Q9. What was the biggest roadblock in this kind of food-ordering system and how you tackled it ?

Roadblocks are a way of getting better and we have always welcomed them. Development of any software comes with bugs, implementing security layers are always a big issue. Curating menu's and maintaining Quality and consistency is also a concern area. Logistics and managing customer expectation are always a challenge. Deciding on "must have features" and eliminating "nice to have features" in our software has helped us keep the App usability high with our customers. Creating touch points with our customer during their buying cycle has worked well in meeting customer expectation.

Q10. If you'd like to conclude a lesson from your startup journey , What'd be that ?


The start will always be tough and will keep getting tougher as things progress. This itself is a positive sign, keep improving and be open to align and meet customer expectations, this will help us gain grounds and win trust of our customer. Once you have made a name for your enterprise aka brand in customer's heart, there is no way a enterprise can fail. The pot of the gold is not at the end of the rainbow, it is the journey itself and the feedback's from customers which are gold nuggets which help to fill the pot. The wealth is with the customers and the trick is to make them part with it happily. We are focussed on creating customer delight to reach our Goals.

Vinay Menon sharing his views on Developer's Interview.

    It is a good intitative and I read Richa Singh's interview , was really impressed with her startup "Yourdost.com". Startups can always do with PR and giving them exposure will be appreciated well. Will go through the complete list soon. We can see your e-mag is also on a startup journey , I am sure you would cover many interesting founders as you progress. We at meratiffin wish you good luck with your initiative. Let us know if we could be of some assistance to you.

Ankit DP's Interview

Name : Ankit DP.

He is , Co-Founder of Witworks, a Bangalore based collaborative invention company. It was started back in January 2014 by him and his batchmates from IIT Kharagpur, Somnath Meher and Chandrashekhar Iyer. They loved solving problems that came their way, regardless of whether it was a complex theorem or an everyday is like untangling your headphone cords. After having spent a couple of years in the corporate world, all three quit their jobs at Google, ITC and Tata Steel respectively to pursue their passion full-time. Besides, Somnath and him, decided to put off their admission to the Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad in order to build Witworks. The team now comprises of a bunch of very creative and enthusiastic engineers, designers and developers working day in, day out to get the next big product out there...and of course find the next brilliant inventor! Each and every person out in the world is a part of their team, all you need is an idea and just sit back, relax and leave the rest to them!

Q1 : What is Witworks ?


Witworks is a product development startup based out of Bangalore. Witworks is based on the principle of collaborative invention. We are building a platform in India where anyone can become an inventor, all they need is one brilliant idea. A lot of us have ideas that can make a difference, but we are unsure whether they are viable. That is mostly because we lack the technical knowledge or the means to back such projects. Well, this is where Witworks comes into the picture. All you have to do is submit your idea to Witworks.

Anyone can submit your idea, discuss and evaluate it along with a community of your peers and experts in their respective fields. They get to be in complete control of the idea at all times, and eventually, if they and all the evaluators and experts feel that their idea has potential, it moves on to manufacturing and your product sees the light of day! Every package will have their name on it, designating them as the creator, and they also receive a share of the revenue.

Q2 : How you got such an Idea of making a Product "Rewind" ?

Being a part of our college band and also hard core music lovers ourselves, it is needless to say that all three of us loved and owned a prized pair of earphones. But, paying a huge amount for those headphone and watching the cords get tangled and eventually spoilt pinched us everytime we grabbed our headphones to enjoy some music, not to mention the effort that goes into untangling those cords. Thats when the three of us realised there was a need for a solution to this problem and here we are with “Rewind”.

Q3 : Have you CrowdFunded the initial product "Rewind" ? If so , then why ? Is "Rewind" the only product you came with ? or any other product is on the way ?

Lucky for us, our first product “Rewind” was a great success and we faced no need to crowdfund it. However, we are now working on two great new ideas by two different inventors  and are planning to experiment with a Kickstarter like Pre-Order model . This would in turn, help us with a few critical things:

• Validate the need for the product based on the pre-order count/response
• Get the word out even before the product hits the market, thereby creating a demand for initial sales and help mitigate inventory/investment risk

Once we are able to establish the launch and sales of products with a Pre-Order model, it could open the floodgates for getting a series of innovations out to the market very well and very soon through a replicable system.

Our next 2 products are all set to be launched for pre-orders very soon. Do check out our website for the latest updates on these amazing products and help us make it happen.

Q4 : How many brilliant minds are there in your team ?

Our team currently comprises of the following members. 

Chandrashekhar Iyer

Co-Founder & Head of Operations

Somnath Meher

Co-Founder & Head of Sales, Marketing, BD

Ankit DP

Co-Founder & Head of Technology

Sumbul Naqvi

Marketing & Communications Manager

Mugdha Rasal

Sales & Operations Manage

Ajay Kumar G

Software Developer

Sri Raman

Software Developer

Maninder Singh

Designer (Photography, Digital Art)

Rajshekar Reddy

Product Designer

Q5 : How your company affects Society ?

The whole concept of Witworks is to bring about a change in our society at various levels. Not only do we want to solve everyday problems of the society but we also want to change the way our society thinks. Pitching an idea to Witworks is a thought provoking process and we are encouraging every single person out there to be creative, become an inventor and irrespective of your educational qualification, you can start earning a living from your idea - something you never thought would be possible!

Besides, India has always been seen as a service-centered economy. Even with the brightest of people, extensive resources and a plethora of ideas (being home to the concept of Jugaad), we seldom come across inventions in the country that could potentially change the way people do things across the world. The gap there lies in giving shape to people’s ideas in terms of final design/development and manufacturing. We are attempting to fill that gap, along with taking the onus of doing the last mile of sales/distribution for these products. To put it simply, we are aiming to democratize the consumer product space, by making products for the people, by the people.

Q6 : What is your ultimate Goal ?

Our ultimate goal is to change the World. We believe every problem has an innovative solution and who better to find those solutions than each and every person on this planet. 

We are living in an era where users have now started forming both the demand and the supply side of  things. The consumers are transforming into creators and contributors. Wikipedia, Quora, Youtube or for that matter, even Facebook work precisely this way. The consumers themselves create, curate and manage the content; and in some cases the product.  The crowd and cloud is changing modern consumerism. The online platforms play the role of a facilitator where the users connect to become communities. These communities share the technology, operational infrastructure and even funds within a defined framework. The concept of shared assets coupled with online marketplaces is disrupting several industries; starting right from transportation to hospitality. Think of Uber and AirBnB, where users are both on the consumer and the service provider seats. 

It’s only a matter of time before a similar disruption happens in the consumer product space, and we’d say sooner than later; because innovation is rather inevitable there. So get out there and send us your ideas here as we work towards getting consumers on the makers’ seat this time around.

Q7 : How Witworks helps makers ?

As mentioned earlier, the inventor gets a share of the revenue obtained from the sales of their product apart from making them famous, as each product will have the name of the inventor and it will be called their creation.

However, at a broader level, the makers/tinkerers will now have a taker for their ideas/work. Making a hardware product (especially, in India) is a lot more than just the initial proof of concept and prototyping. There is significant importance of designing something for manufacturability, creating a demand for the new product, and getting it through the right distribution channels. We tried validating it with the first product we designed, which is a solution to the small yet very common problem of earphone entanglement. We scouted for manufacturers across the country, got into bad deals, burnt our fingers, lost a ton of money and more importantly time. But we learnt our lessons. We shall be extending these learnings to enable every user at Witworks. The systems we have in place shall enable any maker to get her/his idea from a whiteboard concept/prototype to the shelves in retail outlets.

Q8 : How much time it took you to take Witworks to this level ?

The three of us were good friends in college and got together to form a small group of students (both Under-grads and Post-grads), who really loved creating new stuff. We would meet up in abandoned lab basements, dark alleys, midnight cafes to discuss ideas over half cooked Maggis and chai. Starting from a foot operated water faucet that could be implemented by the Indian Railways to a forward osmosis desalination technology to a digital pen that could record whatever you write, we really wanted to have some of these ideas see the light of day. We built a lab top prototype, or as we call the laboratory top working prototype for the digital pen. This made us win a lot of technology and business plan competitions both in India and abroad. We got seed funding and incubation from our alma mater IIT Kharagpur. However, we didn't have the infrastructure and funds it would have taken to manufacture and commercialize these prototypes as consumer products. So we graduated and took up jobs. That was the saddest day of our lives and the happiest day of our parents’. 

Unfortunately or fortunately, after spending 2 good years drawing analysis and charts on  excel sheets, and managing cigarette production on the shop floor we decided to disappoint our parents midway and quit our jobs (between Dec 2013 - March 2014) to start over something we had left in college 3 years back. And here we are today with our first product “Rewind” out in the market and ready to launch two more great products. 

Q9 : What offer Witworks have , if any maker/innovator/inventor etc have a moonshot idea?

We would love to have a moon shot idea but as of now we are a small company starting of with small ideas. We are slowly moving from simple design based solutions to products with some amount of mechanical/electronics complexity. This is build capability incrementally in terms of manufacturing and distribution. But if there is anybody out there with a great idea, please do let us know, for who knows, someday we end up making an Iron Man suit and watch inventor Ton Stark lift off in it...

Karan Pujara's Interview.

Name : Karan Pujara

He is basically from Bhuj-Kutch and currently based in Ahmedabad , Gujarat. He completed his Diploma Computer engineering from Nirma university in year 2011, Ahmedabad and  B.E in year 2014 from A.D Patel Institute Of technology,Vallabh Vidyanagar.

Founder , StudentDesk.in .





Q1. Tell us about your startup Studentdesk.in.

Studentdesk.in is platform where readers can buy, sell, exchange their books, magazines or any reading material within their city/institute. It will save their time and money as they don't have to pay for higher commission rates to books stores while selling their used books and no need to travel around the city to buy/sell their books.

Readers can read books for free by exchanging their books with other users for limited period of time, As they dont have to pay for each and every novel/magazine they want to read, even no need to pay for library subscription.

Have a look at an introductory video of Studentdesk.in  ( Here )which will help you to understand the concept in a better and clear way:

Q2. How you came up with this idea ?

Unlike, many, I have been lucky to have support to reach this far in attaining my education. I reminisce waiting for days to be able to buy used book from seniors or find someone to exchange my “Revolution 20-20” with “The Alchemist,” because buying new books was very expensive.
Additionally, I along with many of my friends prefered to buy books from our seniors as it always contains important sections and question marked. But it was pretty tedious to find someone willing to sell. Similarly, selling was equally arduous process. During my 3rd year in engineering, I went to sell my used books to the books store but he hardly returned any money for them. Thus, I thought, directly giving books to my juniors would be more appropriate, as this would not only save money to both parties but will also save time, and money.
It did not come to me as a Eureka moment, but as a Eureka idea. I saw the possibility democratizing knowledge and learning by enabling every individual and home to contribute and access to the decentralized library.
The day people being able to acquire knowledge without any least financial disability, doesn’t seem far.


Q3. Is there a team behind it or are you only there to manage such an awesome work?

Yes, my roommate Binit Thacker (Founder- yellowmedialabs.com) is helping me for UI/UX part of website and I do have interns who are working with me as their final year internship program.

Q4. How much time it took you to convert this awesome idea to reality ?

During my final year i wanted to so something which can really help people, so i have selected StudentDesk as my final year engineering project and it took us 4 months to complete first version of this website.

Q5. Do you earn from this or it is non-profit ?

Currently, we are totally focusing on users  so as of now we are not planning to generate any revenue off this website.

Q6. What is the main aim of running this portal?

Main aim of running this portal is to make easy availability of books for readers. We believe that “ books are our best friends and best friends should not be expensive."

The day people being able to acquire knowledge without any least financial disability, doesn't seem far.

Q7. Which point makes difference between StudentDesk and other similar Portals/websites ?

Studentdesk.in is dedicated book exchange portal where students and fellow readers can buy, sell, exchange or donate their books within their college or city, so its like we are building community of readers which makes it unique from other website.

Harsh Songra's Interview

Name : Harsh Songra

He is  a young app developer and also an Entrepreneur. He is Founder and CEO of Studiebay.com- A coaching search engine. Other then that he have android apps on Google play and a blog named thetimeahead.com. His work is based on Education and Health Sector.





Q1. Who motivated you towards Android development ?

Well basically my dad always helped me in development and I got somewhat good in java so he told me to shift towards android.

Q2. How you spent your time towards development ?

I am passionate about programming. I have even coded for 18 hours nonstop I don't know on what :P . But yeah I did that. 

Q3. Tell us about your developments .


Studiebay.com- A coaching search engine , The time ahead   a daily magazine on the Web., Android Applications like : My child , Elasticity of Demand , VAT Calculator , Index Calculator .

Q4. How you gonna help society by your developments ?

Well my apps are in to educate people about different factors like health and Technology.

Q5. What was the story behind your startup studiebay ?

I was wondering If you can search everything online why not coaching classes.

Q6. You told us that you were Nokia DVLUPr of the week .. ? What did you developed ? Tell us about that .

I developed the My Child app actually for which they gave me the honor. 

Q7. Introduce us with your startup Studiebay .

Studiebay is an online platform which is dedicated to coaching classes

listing. Though there are websites like Justdial and Yellow Pages,

which provide us with address and contact details and even are

integrated with Google Maps. However, this much information is not

enough for students looking for the most suited coaching class for

them.

How does Studiebay help students in this important search :

1. The student will get a brief about the coaching.

2. The Student will get to know all the courses offered by the coaching class.

3. The Student will Get to know about the USPs of the coaching classes.

4. The Student will Get to know about the toppers of the coaching classes.

That would mean, the students no longer have to visit each coaching

class, or take multiple advices from seniors to find out what’s the

best suited coaching for them. We plan to scale this, to state,

national and then hopefully to a global level.

Q8. Tell us about your My Child app .

It's an app for Prevention of developmental disorder. My Child is an app which tell you about your child's growth. It gives you information about your child's key areas of consideration after you answer the questionnaire. The app is for children between from 11 to 24 months and asks you about the areas of growth during that particular period. The App is Particularly meant for prevention of developmental disorder. 

Links to all of his work : 

Apps on Play store

The Time Ahead

Studiebay

Facebook post by Nokia 

Contact him at : 

www.harshsongra.in

@hankock007

Dhiraj Jadhao's Interview

Name : Dhiraj Jadhao

He likes to think of himself as a hardcore maker. He loves to tinker with both hardware and software and derives deep satisfaction in combining his electronics background with iOS development. RF communication is a subject very close to his heart and he has dabbled in aeromodelling, RC aircraft and UAVs like quadrotors before the Internet of Things and home automation piqued his interest. He is actively involved in almost all open source hardware and software activities happening in India and became one of the first active members of the IOT-Pune group that eventually brought him to RHC. He was involved in NASA's Curiosity Mars Mission Project and responsible for designing data transmission module which was completed successfully in 2012.

He's the  currently Chief Embedded Systems Engineer at Revealing Hour Creations  and President at iArduino Workplace.

Q1. What is TAH ?

Tah is an open source development board that helps you create your own projects that can connect to your smart phone, laptop, or desktop via Bluetooth low energy. Its frugal power requirements and onboard USB open up a wide array of applications that weren’t previously possible. With the power and flexibility of Tah, it’s now easier than ever to connect your smart devices to everything around you!

Features:

    Arduino-compatible
    Bluetooth Low Energy + Beacon
    USB HID-compatible
    iOS and Android Libraries
    Open source throughout

This powerful combination allows Arduino applications to be controlled directly using your smartphone – your phone’s built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, and other sensors can directly trigger events in the physical world!

Tah is a LEGO block for enabling the Internet of Things.

Q2.  From where did you got such Inspiration ?

As an engineer i have seen how beginner get directionless when he wants to start with some project. In tech world having knowledge of specific things only doesn't work out and therefore one should have the ability or expertise in all aspects. Instead of focussing on single application i wanted to create a strong platform which will have completely open source infrastructure and which should not be only focussed on either hardware or software but on both at the same time. "Smart Devices" specifically "Smartphone" has became a part of our life now and everyone need control over information and things from that single device and this is how i came up with Tah.

 Q3. How your product affects society ?

While developing Tah I have kept novice person in mind, so if anyone with minimal or no knowledge can easily start prototyping with Tah and create amazing stuffs in no time.
As prototyping time and cost gets reduce because of the resources and support available behind Tah, Everyone can develop amazing application which will bring dumb physical things around us on network and let them interact with the real world.

Q4. What resources you used and how you found them ?

Most of the resources required for development of Tah are easily available in india. As Tah is completely open source we have released BOM(Bill Of Material) in which component details as well as from where they were purchased is also given.

Q5. What are you thinking ahead with TAH , any company being plant ?

I have several plans for Tah ahed, this is just a beginning and in near future it will evolve with many amazing features which will be completely amazing and distinguishable.

Q6. What are the possible places where TAH can be used ?

Tah can fit into lots of technical application as Home Automation, Fitness Tracker, Wearable Device, Wireless Game Controller, Sensor Network, Item Tracker, Retail Advertisement, Smart Medical devices, Indoor Navigation, Smart Agriculture devices, Industrial Application and many more, actually with so many open source resources and reference there are endless possibilities. 

Q7. What is your ultimate goal ?

There is a saying "Look Learn and Change" and this is the best way to learn something according to me, if someone  want to create something then its easy for him to take reference from somewhere and do modifications according to his need and this is how innovation happens. And therefore I want to integrate this kind of technology in our education system so that it won't just create an Engineer but an Innovator.

For more info. on TAH , kindly visit here .

Nirman Dave's Interview

Name : Nirman Dave

He's an 18 year old Techie , Inventor , Blogger , Coder and Professor from Rajkot .

Inventer of a Multi-touch Surface table  " ANTable "

Developer of a Programming Language " Snick "





Q1. Give us your brief intro.
I am 18 years old and just graduated from The Galaxy School in Rajkot, Gujarat. I have pursued the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. I strongly believe in helping the society through the use of technology, a unique and challenging task. And for this purpose I work to empower people by connecting them with the most essential part of their life. Software. Every person is different and my vision is to bridge this difference by connecting people through softwares created by me. I program in many different computer languages and have worked on versatile interesting projects such as Antable : Converting a piece of paper into a multi-touch surface table, Snick : A computer programming language coded completely by me, A 3D chocolate printer, Benedict : An artificial intelligence system and 200+ different software projects all featured on my website – SourceNet.

Simultaneously I have also been active in research work in the field of computer science. Research work on artificial intelligence, number pattern recognition and pseudo random numbers is ongoing while research work on image processing in multi-touch surface tables, e-commerce and binary digits has been completed. Due to all the research work and projects I have worked on and their success in the open source software market, I have been invited to speak as a key note at many different colleges and conferences.
Find more about me on: www.nirmandave.com

Q2. What inspired you towards programming?

While I always loved computers, an incident from my school life got me embedded into programming. It was time when I was in grade 6th or 7th and a few guys at school started to bully me. I was extremely frustrated by them. As a 6th standard boy, I got angry and involved myself into a fight. While the teachers at my school discouraged such behaviour from me, I felt even more supressed. The bullying carried on, until I became too frustrated and thought of hacking my bully’s account. I started with going on web search engines and finding “How to hack an online account?”. Nothing seemed to work out, so I later decided to learn computer programming to make a hacking software. Using online tools like YouTube and other websites, I learnt my first programming language, VB. With this I created a phishing device to get back to my bully. While this had a short term benefit on my life, I believed why not do something that benefits all. Leaving behind my unethical thoughts, I started to develop software for people to use in their everyday life. Uploaded all of it on a web space named SourceNet.

Q3. Which languages you like and which you prefer.

The language I prefer the most is Python. It is simple and comes handy when you need to develop some quick applications. It is extremely flexible and I recommend it to all. However, while coding hard-core softwares which require production level work, I prefer C.

Q4. Do you have any repo of your work?If so then introduce us with it.
I do have a repo of my work on GitHub under the name ‘nddave’ and the repo of my company under the name ‘OpenSourceNet’. While much of my softwares’ codes are not found there. Instead, I embed the codes of my softwares within the software! For example, you might have used Weberks, where the top menu bar can lead you to an option named ‘View source codes’ under the about section.

Q5. How was your experience with coding world? And how you use to pass your free time.

The coding world is filled with fantastic knowledgeable people and collaborating with them is awesome. I have had a great experience with the coding world and have got to learn a lot more from many people. Most of what I learn about coding is from people who are not in the technical field at all. As a coder might appreciate my code, but people outside the field won’t; they need output. And that’s what I am learning to deliver.

My pass time is usually used making something. Just some random idea that strikes my mind, I try to make it. As I believe in introducing new products in market, then rebuilding existing ones.

Q6. What practices you followed to achieve such success.

I have not achieved success. There is nothing like success or, to say, nothing like achievement.
It’s all about the work you do. What is important is that I show interest in the work that I do and my interest becomes my work. Just do that, and if you end up making something worth noticeable, it’s cool! Just don’t stop making!

Q7. We have heard that you have created a software "snick" to create your own software? Introduce us with that.

Well,Snick is a programming language I created, somewhere around April 2014. It allows you to, just like other programming languages, make your own software. What makes it special is that it has instant debugging and you can append to its source code. So that everyone using this language can use your line of code to carry out some work!

Q8. What are you targeting by doing all these?

I work to empower people by connecting them with the most essential part of their life. Software. Every person is different and my vision is to bridge this difference by connecting people through softwares created by me. I believe that every software that I have has the power to make a difference in some one’s life. May it be a student or a businessman, a guy in a remote village or someone in a large city. I am targeting that with every software I create, I should fulfil the needs of a large audience.

Q9. What steps you feel should be followed to be a good programmer.

Frankly, I don’t know. All I have done is kept programming. I remember a time when I used to return home from school, and open my laptop, sit there until its night. And stand up after creating a software. It became my agenda to code, publish and repeat. With this, today I have ended up with about 200 different softwares to my credit, with 1.2M users worldwide! To put it short; just like being a good cricket player requires practicing cricket, being a good coder requires practicing code. And I am still practicing.


You can also find more details about him and his projects on:

His start-up SourceNet: www.sourcenet.in




His well-known softwares: www.softpedia.com/publisher/Nirman-Dave-75689.html

All details about him and his work: www.nirmandave.com

Dhaval Palsana 's Interview

Name :- Dhaval Himatbhai Palsana.

He is Master of Science Mechanical Engineering from

New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering 
and Bachelor of Technology Mechatronics Engineering, GPA 3.6 and from Ganpat University, Mahesana, India

The developer of D-mouse ( A software that tracks your finger movement using webcam and convert that movement into mouse motion ).

For more Info about him and his projects go here .

1. Give us a brief into of your project Dmouse ? what does it actually do and what you are trying to actually develop ?

:- " Initially I started this project as a ball follower robot, the one that I saw for the first time at some seminar held at Nirma University. It all came to me in 7 th semester during which I got familiar with Image processing and its basics. The one thing that helped me throughout this project was internet, I just surfed through lots of websites and created one small software which can just capture images and show it one by one on window created by MATLAB itself, but it was unmanaged code! It crashed every 50 seconds and my laptop would simply restart, it was then I understood memory usage by the software we create. Back in college I never took it seriously because at there all in need was lots of integers, characters and double integers but here the scenario was completely different, at every second my laptop was processing 5.2 MB! Once again, I mentioned here "processing"  not copying data, so it took me 2 days to learn smart saving concepts of cache memory and finally reduced CPU usage from 50% to 20 % . Further I filtered my image applying by simple threshold and also tried subtracted two consecutive images in order to approximate the changes in environment the camera sees. But the results were poor with this technique, the problem is ideally it should work but practically it doesn't !.  So I thought of switching the platform as well as finding some shortcut to remove the variance in seen object in different regions of image captured by live webcam. The first one I came across was Robo realm and it was nice tool for easily prototyping and software, but thank god it was paid version and so I left this one very soon and finally settled down on OpenCV which was open source and little complicated than MATLAB, but one good thing was if you use Visual Studio or any such compiler and if you compile your project , a .exe (executanle) file would be generated which can run on any machine running Windows OS. Getting back to my ball follower project I was just waving my colored ball in front of camera and was looking for the best results trying out with different threshold values, but as an engineer you can rely on trial and error method - it was a turning point for me. So I sorted out various techniques through which my computer can automatically select the values from shown image , not to mention with little help from my keyboard click, and while designing this part of the software I wished my cursor moved as I waved my hand! This point was going to take my work into total different direction, which I never imagined. Once I again I started from zero to search various methods and commands to move mouse cursor, secondly I mapped them to my screen resolution which is not hard if you love linear equation of line! While I was designing this whole thing I was still at zero point when it comes to transferring ability of my app to other machines. "

2:- On which programming language does this software is based ?

 :- " It's based on C++ but can be ported to other languages. "

3:-  One can use this Dmouse software for gaming purpose or not ?

 :- " Yes and possibilities are infinite! Anyone interested can join me to code it and make something amazing! "

Personal Links :- 

Twitter   Facebook   Personal Website

Tejas Jasani's Interview

Name :- Tejas Jasani

He is CEO, The App Guruz . studied MCA at Nirma University - 2009. 








Interview  :-

1. Which Language Do you like most for Programming ? which would you like to prefer  ?


" I personally do programming in Java , but in our company - for gaming - we use Unity - i.e. c# "



2.  Have you ever Tried for Android , Windows , Symbian , Java , Blackberry , IOS development ? if so , then How was your Experience ?


  "  we are doing games in mostly all the platforms - and we do apps in Android and iOS , not symbian "


3. Where Did you studied java? what were the sources ?
 

" I have done my MCA from Nirma so - Java was part of the study and Lynda.com courses are good way to start too "


Personal Links :- 

www.theappguruz.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TheAppGuruz 

http://in.linkedin.com/pub/theappguruz-tag/64/a48/a42 



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