Indian Innovators - Manoj Deshmukh

At some point in everyone’s career, we have looked on with envy at someone who is clearly enjoying their job because they really love it. You review your own daily grind and feel, what if I quit my job in a few months and start building that Etsy shop for selling anime-themed products? Admit it, you have thought along those lines more often than you would care to admit.

Today, my guest on the Indian Innovators podcast is Manoj Deshmukh. He is a software engineer and my classmate from PICT. A few years ago he quit his highly successful software executive job and got serious about his hobby - making custom fountain pens. Since then he has had amazing success, as fountain-pen lovers all over the world have found his website and have been ordering pens from him, so much so that his current backlog for pen delivery is about 2 years. Yes, that’s right - if you order a pen from his website today, he can only deliver it to you about 2 years from now.

The cliché “follow your passion” is absolutely brought alive by Manoj. He makes each pen by hand, making one pen a day. He researches ink delivery mechanisms, designs his own, and experiments with new wood and acrylic materials. His finished products are quite stunning and very comfortable to write with.

Watch our interview and find out how he finally gave up his day job and turned to make his hobby his daily addiction. You can order his pens at fosforpens.com

Manoj Deshmukh - Artisanal fountain-pen maker

Indian Innovators - Anil Lamba

As a young entrepreneur starting my first company back in 1993 at the age of 24 in India, I had a really severe shortcoming in my skill set. I had no idea how to manage the money we were earning from selling BBS subscriptions for my startup, JabberWocky BBS.

My partner, my younger brother was still in school, and I had just graduated from computer engineering college myself. The only thing that I learned in college that was of any use, was hacking Linux. And that skill was acquired on my own without any help from the college staff or syllabus.

In the approximately six years or so (a story for another post😀) I spent in engineering school, they tried to teach us everything from Thermodynamics and Strength of Materials to Compiler Construction and Linear Circuits. But the one subject that no one taught us was finance.

Even today, none of the engineering syllabi offer a course on financial basics, like reading a balance sheet, raising corporate capital, and forming a company?

Luckily for me, one day in 1995, I saw an ad in the local newspaper on a Financial Basics class taught by another young entrepreneur named Anil Lamba. I signed up for the course, and over the next ten weeks, every Saturday was spent learning how to be a financially literate entrepreneur. That course changed my life and put me on the path of financial freedom. I was able to navigate the deliberately complex world of corporate finance and manage the entirely crucial world of personal finance.

Today, my guest is Anil Lamba himself. We have kept in touch through all these years, and I have watched his training program grow to a successful enterprise at Lamcon Schools. He is the author of many best-selling financial books (all of which I own). His first book “Romancing the Balance Sheet” is required reading for anyone who even thinks of starting their own company.

Watch our conversation, and hopefully, it will reaffirm your own financial literacy or get you on the path to it. I cannot emphasize how important this is for everyone.

Indian Innovators - Anil Lamba, Financial Literacy Educator

Indian Innovators - Maria Partapurwala

My guest today is Maria Partapurwala. She was my classmate in elementary school back in Pune, India. After graduating from college and setting up a family with two daughters, she ventured into the field of Yoga.

Her dedication to her craft and to her students is inspiring and highly motivating. I feel that there is too much desire to be a technically perfect yogi or yogini. Rather than that, Maria goes for empathetic yoga teaching, where students appreciate the finer points of yogic exercise and meditation and improve the overall quality of life rather than just the flexibility of their bodies.

Watch and listen to her inspiring story and how she turned a debilitating back injury into a successful yoga school - teaching hundreds of students every day to manage their health better through exercise and fitness rather than medicine and drugs.

PaperCircuit - Indian Innovators with Maria Partapurwala, Yoga Center Founder

Indian Innovators - Vivek Mundkur

Welcome to the PaperCircuit podcast series - Indian Innovators.

My first guest is Vivek Mundkur. I have known him since about 1993 when I first started getting interested in hang-gliding. I was an aero-modeler until then and my aero-modeling guide, Capt. Bhole mentioned that I should meet up with Col. Vivek Mundkur and try out hang-gliding. That was a life-changing moment for me.

I got to know Vivek really well as I learned to hang-glide and later built my own hang-glider with him. We flew it one afternoon in 1995 at the hill behind his Kudje farmhouse. I also learned sailing, wind-surfing, and the art of jugaad (tinkering) from him over the course of many years in the 90s.

View and listen to our chat and see first-hand why he is such an inspiration to everyone…

Vivek Mundkur -pioneer of hang-gliding in India

PaperCircuit Podcast - Indian Innovators

Today is the launch of my PaperCircuit podcast - Indian Innovators. I have been meaning to launch a podcast, ever since the first podcast showed up on my iPod almost 16 years ago. That was the This Week In Tech podcast by Leo Laporte.

During the last few months of COVID, I finally buckled down and put together a plan to interview some amazing Indian creators, mentors, and motivators that I have known throughout my life. These are people I have known first-hand and have caused deep impressions on me and shaped my life so far.

I plan to do these interviews as a limited series of 12 episodes - interviewing a dozen interesting people that have influenced and befriended me. The podcast will be available on my YouTube channel and also on Apple Podcasts. Hope you enjoy the series.