Ice Breaker

Mr. Toastmaster Fellow members and guests.
It's never easy to squeeze 25 years of one's life in 300 seconds.
Still let me make a small attempt to sketch my bio.

I am born and brought up in a kannada family in Shimoga. A town in the
central part of karnataka.
Father is retired now. He was an Ayurvedic practitioner. Mother a housewife.
We are 5 brothers and three sisters. All in all a cricket team.
I wont go into other family details which is another big chapter other
than saying my elders brothers are carrying on the tradition of my
father who prepared a formula for Diabetic patients and which is now
manufacturing in a small pharmaceutical unit.

OK
Me studied at a kannada medium school till 7th and later shifted to an
english medium.
Those were toughest years to adjust to the new environment.

I was a shy boy and not used to look beyond text books.
But I was lucky few times to participate and win prizes in singing and
quizzing contests.

After 12th my parents wanted me to study engineering staying away from home.
Like any other normal students I had this fascination to study space science.
I could not pursue further because there was on god father in my
family circles to advise.

I joined this engg. College in the northern part of karnataka, a place
called Bagalkot.
Extermely humid and heated weather where the tempearture in summer
raises to 40 + degrees.

I took up electronics and stayed in hostel. One of the best hostel
facilities in Karnataka I should say. Very well maintained in all
respects.
We were wonderful set of friends from different parts of Karnataka and
other states.

I must quote two incidents which are worth mentioning during my stay
at Bagalkot.
Me a very mild and shy boy wanted to get rid of that image.
I was in second year. And there was an election for the post of class
representative.
My friends also encouraged.
On the day of the election we're supposed to give a pre-election
speech asking to vote.
That was my first ever addressing to a group of people.
I prepared the speech and practised all night.
Well the opponent was quite influential and a big guy.
Well, the magic of the prepared speech was so good that the default
assumed winner lost the election by a big margin.
Though I dint manage the post so very well…it gave me some kind of
confidence that I can speak in public.

Then there was in third year. My college computer got this internet connection.
For a college of over 1000 students there were two PCs which were
connected to the internet.
One always used to be occupied by senior faculty and lecturers and
other terminal by me.

Well the awareness and usage of internet was low….
Excitement of using internet was so high that I used to skip classes,
stay late and use the internet.
Computer lab faculties were so bugged with me that they used to
complain about me to the HODs.
And I was banned to use the internet for sometime.

This irritated me a lot.
When the entire planet is hooked to the net, how can they deny me this right?

One day there was this another department adjacent to this computer
lab. I was working till late in the evening.
When they were about to lock the department, I hid behind the tables
and stayed underneath till 7.30 - 8.0 or so with not a movement.
When everything was silent around, I sneaked into that computer lab
and happily browsed all night without any food and controlliing all
the nature calls.
I had list of websites to visit. Wanted to configure an email client.
Wanted to post few queries to the user groups.
I must have browsed till late in 5 in the morning.
And jumped back in to my department and managed to escape….

Believe me I was so obsessed with the internet that at one time I had
created 32 email ids for my name. 32.
I had a home page of mine. And was first to almost any new phenomenon in the
world of internet.
Some of my friends instead of Aravinda, call me as Netvinda.

I became a overnight role model in my college after I was recruited to
a big telecom company called Lucent technologies. This is again
courtesy internet.
It never happened for years to that college which hardly had any
exposure to IT companies that a boy made it into a big telecom
company.

Eventually I ended up as being the best out going student of the college.

I finished college came to bangalore in year 2000. Worked for Lucent
technologies for 2.5 years.
The Business unit got sold out and I moved on to another chinese
company called huawei technologies.
I quit huawei because of their extremely inhumane working conditions.
Joined siemens. Over a year now….

I have resigned at siemens last week and joining another startup next month.
Has been a bumpy road so far. With ups and downs.

Going forward I would like to own an IT company in a wireless domain.
Let's see.

Besides work.
I have done a certificate course in astrophysics from Birla Instt of
fundamental research from weekend classes.
Post graduate diploma in advertising and public relations at an
evening college from jain instt.

My other interests include
Blogging on the net.
Entrepreneurial interests.
Avid reader of Non-fiction and Basic sciences

Over to Mr. Toastmaster.