Yesterday evening we were obliged to attend the Startup Saturday- an event for entrepreneurs to discuss, present, network and learn from prospective customers, adopters, peers, partners and investors, organized by the Headstart Networks at Globsyn Business School, Salt Lake. For the reason that we departed little earlier than the event winded up, we missed the Startcamp Pitch but were lucky enough to witness the session by Dr. G. D. Gautama (Principal Secretary at Department of Power & Non-conventional Energy Sources, Govt. of West Bengal), a questionnaire round on IT Industry and a talk by Abhishek Rungta (CEO at Indus Net Acedemy) about his journey while his company expanded from Kolkata to Chennai to London. It was an enriching event not only for the startup businesses but also for the aspiring entrepreneurs in any industry.

Now what I’ll mention would definitely make you laugh because the happening has got so frequent with us that we always need to mention it for apologies? After moving from the Globsyn Business School, we found one of the tyres of our car was punctured and we unfortunately didn’t have the Stephaney (an extra tyre) again. This time neither Justdial nor Arihant Enterprise played a role in being a god-sent, but instead we have tons of gratitude to express to Shikha’s Uncle who got us an extra tyre at the spot. After this we moved out for a sumptuous dinner at Barbeque, Park Street and returned back home late at 12o’clock tasting the different flavors of ice-cream at Mammia Gelanto. It was a wonderful weekend that went so marvelously without much effort on planning. While we were returning, I became happy on a thought that the week hasn’t ended and actually Sunday is left! Thinking that I’ve got enough time and less work to do, I messaged my friends for a Lunch just to catch up with them after a long time. And Sunday has come finally. It’s just morning and I will have throughout the day.

Huh, between all this I forgot to mention one of my life’s most adventurous happening that occurred yesterday (I was praying god to give me another opportunity to travel after this one). While going to office I almost clanged outside the bus for half of the journey until I really got space to push myself inside the bus. I hung outside the bus with only one hand and a leg inside the bus. It was thrilling and scary at the same time. Well, as a fact, I’m unhappy with the current public transport systems at Kolkata- autos are not running for the short distances and the old buses have been removed. People have to wait for hours to get a bus which indeed takes you on a ‘lifetime rides’. It’s not far that we will find passengers climbing on the roof of the bus and hanging on the window’s until they reach their destination. Please Govt. of Bengal, from anywhere read the blog and listens to our request of good transportation facility!

As I am coming towards the end of what I am writing, there is a good news. While I was sad that WE are not meeting up this sunday and started expressing through my post, I learnt that we are meeting at 5o’clock in the evening at FOURDY SOLUTIONS to discuss further on our upcoming online photography contest- ADP (Amar Durga Puja) this Durga puja. Yupiiee, I am happy and glad to meet them all together :)

Follow our group- FOURDY and ADP updates page at Facebook and we will keep you informed about the minutest of the  detail.

I have no clue from where to start it off and how to wind it up. But for present, I’m more concerned in explaining the exhilarating experience that me and my companions: Rahul Bharadwaj, Khushboo Nangalia, Shikha Kedia, Anurag Ahuja and Yogesh Goel (better identified by the populace at the meet as ygoel.com) had at the Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 on 8th August, 2009 at Café Coffee Day, Salt Lake (Sector V), Near Adlabs Cinemas, Kolkata.

I couldn’t perceive how 5 hours flew like few minutes, and the programme was over. I only did when the Prize Distribution (which was supposed to be the last on the agenda) commenced and FOURDY Wlog (led by my brother Rahul) won the ‘Best Elevator Pitch Award’.

Returned home happy, relaxed and obviously very proud. All the way back to home late at 11o’clock, we all were in a joyous mood evaluating the event and sharing our thoughts; when I actually sat back in the car recalling every incident that happened to occur before the event. I remembered the message of Yogesh Bhaiya about the KBM’09 which I deleted instantly as I read and didn’t even give it a second thought (just in an assumption that it was a meet for the bloggers as the name suggested). Just after two days what I found that Rahul had already seen through the message, surfed the webreps.in site, have gathered all the knowledge about the organizing group, the meet, their history, the scheduled plan of the programme and has already punched in an idea at their site, posted an article at FOURDY Wlog and the best of all — Registered all of us for the event. He personally took me on a brief ride through his discoveries and in turn ignited within me a yearning to be a part of Kolkata Blogger’s Meet. We kept in touch with Kamanashish Roy (one of the organizers) for details of the event.

Only when a day was left for the event, Rahul and me found each other writing on our Facebook Wall: “Bloggers Meet this Saturday… looking forward to it eagerly” (this was my update). Although we both were very excited for the thing but were not able to pull in time to discuss about it further due to the work pressure and approaching project deadlines. Coincidently, on the morning of 8th August (evening KBM was scheduled) at around 5o’clock we broke in to a conversation (similarly to this fine morning, we usually sit back discussing about different issues coming our way on daily basis at this time when we are relaxing) where after a concurrent suggestions and planning we finally darted on our ‘strategy’ for the meet.

Just as decided I moved out early in the morning at 10 o’clock executing all the tasks set aside for me and back at the base Rahul worked further on the idea, gathered everyone, accomplished some itinerary works and set forth for the meet. All set they moved out at 3 o’clock and picked me on the way from the ‘Poddar Court’. Before we could have tasted the thrill of the evening at the CCD, we had to go through an unpleasant adventure — mind it I choose calling it adventure (on a sarcastic note) while the tyre of our car got ruptured in the midst of Salt Lake (on the road taking you to Nicco Park: just few kilometers away from our destination) and incidentally stephanie (an extra tyre) has experienced the same a day before. Nothing but ‘Justdial’ comes to your mind at such a situation. We were so off the city and had thin chances of having any car servicing garage nearby. Nevertheless, from the list of many contacts forwarded to us by Justdial, like a god-sent Arihant Enterprise has a tons of gratitude to be expressed from our end. We left our car at Nicco Parking area and somehow managed to reach the destination on time with the help of a taxi.

We rushed and reached the venue almost on time. As we entered and had our seats, we had Kamanashish (part of an organizing team and personally my favorite host who had the power to rise the lethargic audience in his persona) officially announcing the beginning of the Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009. Soham Pal (the youngest blogger present in the show) inaugurated the show by cutting the cake. Later during the programme when Soham and I had a talk then we happen to know each other. In fact, he had also commented on one of my post at FOURDY Wlog.

Next, we had Elevator Pitch event, where 1 minute was scheduled for a blogger to describe their blog. A lot of bloggers participated amongst which one of them was Rahul Bharadwaj, who just took 45 seconds to place his thoughts on FOURDY Wlog (he was on a hunt of good authors for a blog as he wanted them to blog under one roof — FOURDY Wlog) . The event followed by a chain of superb presentations covering various topics on internet by Abhishek Rungta, CEO of Indus Net Technologies, Arun Agarwal of Ebizindia, Aji Issac Mathew of SEO for Clients and Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury of SEO Kolkata. If you ask me what I enjoyed most in the entire programme, Abhishek Rungta’s presentation on the Blog Monetization would be my answer.

Between the event a survey to test the blogging trends in Kolkata was conducted by Indus Net Technologies. The result of the same has been published on their website. Though none of the pens supplied by them worked, yet the enthusiastic bloggers filled up the form and returned back to the Help Desk. Indus Net also presented a T-shirts & ELearning CD to all the participants. (God! We almost had a CD over all the topics…)

In the Launch a Product event, FusionCharts (represented by Sanket and Saptarshi) presented FusionCharts Google Gadget. Their style was unique — they prepared some really good looking banners apart from the slides. Mitesh Ashar, presented his app – twit discuss, which did not work at that time, but the concept was good. It allows one to monitor conversations on twitter based on the hash tags.

Followed by a dinner arrangement, we had the definite chance of conversing with people there and we did it very well. Tasting the de-facto café coffee day coffee and snacks Rahul, Khushboo, Anurag, Yogesh and I essentially went on explaining our perception of FOURDY Wlog to the populace. What surprised me most were Khushboo and Ekta becoming friends the very night at Facebook just after the meet and consequently the mails for authorship rights in our email addresses just the following day. Had a wonderful response from the interested people, either calling directly or mailing us.

The Prize Distribution event was really fun-filled (may be the reason is that we bagged one). Anirudh Lohia (a webrepper) got the Best Idea Award. Though we didn’t win the award here still I’m satisfied by now with scores of people who have shown interest in our idea and joined their hands to make it realism. The Best Elevator Pitcher Award went to Rahul Bharadwaj of FOURDY Wlog & the Best Marketer Award went to Devanand Agarwala from Bima World.

Kolkata Blogger’s Meet has finished and is over but what I carry forward as a legacy is a huge number of – online and offline friends. Had a brilliant opportunity to make friends with Anirban Saha, Saikat Sengupta, Kamanashish Roy, Bijay Rungta, Rajesh Rana, Shirsendu Sengupta, Pallavi Banerjee, Ekta Khetan and many more.
Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 got over on a blissful note and left an indelible mark on us, especially me. In the end all the bloggers decided to share the stage again to have ‘India Internet Summit in Kolkata’ soon. Just looking forward to the event with an equivalent enthusiasm!

Best wishes forever to the organizers (Webreps) and gold sponsorer (Indus Net Technologies). Wishing to have more turn-ups in the next meet! I’m definitely in…

Kyakare is an event calendaring website, the name of which stems from a Hindi word meaning — What do I/we do? The site started with the metropolitan areas of Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and subsequently covered Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Goa. What you’ll find is a glut of events covering various field of interest (like arts, college, courses, dance, deals, eating, exhibition, health, kids, movies, music, seminar, theater, workshop and etc) for each calendar day.

The mind behind the concept of this event listing site strongly felt the necessity to list the events happening in the city online so that any event related information could be surfed without actually turning through the pages of the newspaper tediously.

At Kyakare the look of the site is kept quite simple & ad free without fussing too much on graphic elements which enables it to be among the few of the umpteen sites that tend to register in the viewer’s mind. Unlike other websites, the aim of the site is not to procure revenue by placing a lot of advertisements or increase page hits, but the actual goal remains in providing users with excellent services & earn their trust; which is a reward in itself. The site is a perfect example of a place to discover and share an event.

The homepage showcases the day’s events under all the 19 different categories, events coming soon, recent posted, and most viewed. Each event listing contains a short title to the event, a description, timings, the venue and other contact information where available.

The site also gives user the facility of registering on the site and becoming its member and thereby creating a personal profile of their own. The registered members (people) can rate the events, ‘Like it’ by clicking on the like it option, add people to their friend list and interact with other members through messaging feature within the site. Anyone (without registering) can feed in information about any event happening in the city. RSS feeds are also available. There is lot more interesting features aside from the few mentioned yet which makes this site superior than any other.

In 2009, Kyakare.com got listed in the ‘Top 25 Hottest Indian Web Companies’ – appappeal.com

Kyakare.com has come this far without spending much on marketing and advertisements. All that the team at Kyakare did was to focus on their jobs and provide fabulous service. With every passing day we saw the enterprise grow, slowly but surely. We received new members and events regularly- with over more than 30,000 event listings and 500 registered members since its inception in 2007, Kyakare.com is looking forward to make it’s presence feel in more cities in a year’s time. There is nothing specific laid out for 2010; instead strategies are modified on a weekly basis depending on what suits best.

Being a part of the Kyakare team and a web administrator, I could only wish a good luck to the people there for future and hope that the site gains an excellent and viable readership!

Interested in this event listing site, or thinking aaj kya kare, then visit http://www.kyakare.com/

It was a dream come true for me but since then, it has become very difficult for me to announce this formally (you people know how I am) due to which day by day because of complains from my friends and family no one is enjoying the good news in the way it should be. Hence, I would request all of you to treat this as a formal apology from me and dump any sense of dissatisfaction that you might have and focus on the wedding ceremony, which is scheduled to be on 3rd of December, 2009 at FE Block Community Hall, Salt Lake, Kolkata. Click here if you plan to attend the event.

Engagement took place at Barsana Club, Kolkata on 28th June, 2009 and was a quick ceremony where me and Shikha had exchanged rings. I would like to thank all my friends who had helped me organize the full ceremony within a day’s time.

Anurag Ahuja, who helped me do the shoping for all the gift items, without him Burrabazar would have been a maze. Navneet Sureka, who really helped me with all the jewellery purchases – without him I could have bought glass peices for the cost of diamond. Yogesh Goel, for canceling his birthday party at Chrome and capturing all the moments of the ceremony. Khushboo Nangalia, for helping me pick up the right ladies stuff for Shikha. And, my dear bro, Chetan Bharadwaj, who has also prepared a Photo Album Disk for everyone of you, you can email him at chetan [at] thefourdy [dot] com and request for your copy. Until then, you can click here to view the preview of few selected photos.

CD Cover (Ring Ceremony)

I would once again thank all of you for supporting me through out and I hope that the same support would last ever since.

Regards,
Rahul B.

PS: To all the heart broken boys and girls, pray to God that re-birth is not just fiction.

Rahul @ Don Bosco Liluah (Delhi Board)

He had always been involved in various co-curricular activities like Karate (Gojukai – Brown Belt), Dancing,  Acting, Debating, Creative Writing, Painting, Camping etc. He was a Scout (2000 – 2002), member at SpaceByte club – Computer Science (2002 – 2004) where he also held the position of Secretary. He passed out school with 80.8% of marks.

Rahul @ Scottish Church College (Calcutta University)

He was the elected Department Representative (BBA department) for the year 2005 – 06 and played an very important role in pioneering PODSCORB (a Management Fiesta organized by Scottish Church College). He also scored a Second position in the Business Plan competition along with a First in Gaming. Later on he went to win the title of Best Business Planner 2007 at XMC (Management organized by St. Xaviers College). He passed a merit and the best student of his Batch scoring an agreegate of 65% his and college highest in VIVA presentations which comprised of a report on Online Payment System (2007).

Rahul @ Work

He started his experience at an early age of 16 when he teamed up with Yogesh Goel, Karan Gupta, Rohit Agarwal and Dhiraj Jain to form a group called Web Rangers. During the period of 2001 – 2003, Web Rangers had designed and hosted over 30 websites. In 2004 he partnered with Shamasis Bhattacharya to form the first legal entity called 21innovation (21i). 21i had a great beginning where it designed websites for Penguin Books, Tilottama 2005 (Anand Bazaar Patrika), Xcuse Me (Bhowanipur Gujarati Education Society) and AapTak.

Next milestone was in 2005, when he met Manuraj Agarwal. Manuraj had just started a IT firm called Xgenmedia. Rahul freelanced many small & big projects for Xgenmedia which includes imedcare.com, nutradvice.com, myprintguy.com, kenyagreencoffee.com, eprintcafe.com. Until now, Rahul had developed most of the websites in ASP and some monir fixes on PHP websites. But with his project, eprintcafe.com, he created an online print portal (in PHP) in 4 days, which also happened to be his first PHP website. ePrintcafe opened up the floodgates for other PHP projects and Rahul went on to build other websites like outorg.com, rockandraaga.com, valueking.com, supremesharetradingcompany.com, kyakare.com.

ePrintcafe also was a milestone in itself because that is how he met Cherag Gandhi, who was the owner of eprintcafe.com. Because of the fact that Rahul and Cherag thought on the same lines led to the development of the next major project, eregnow.com. During the initial development phase, Rahul & Shamasis worked for the project under the banner of 21i. The website was launched with minimal features in December 2006.

Once Rahul had graduated in June 2007, he started his full time career as a Consultant for Xgenmedia and eRegNow.com Private Limited. With his experience in the web development and internet business he has help both the companies to grow to their best possibilities. Rahul had taken the designation of Project Manager at Xgenmedia where is primary work was to break a project into various task and assign the various task to the right person with a planned deadline. To know more of Rahul & Xgenmedia, [click here]. During the same period, Rahul worked as an Business & Technical Consultant for eRegNow.com where he balanced the features on the website with the amount of revenue it would fetch the company. To know more about Rahul & eRegNow.com, [click here].

He continued to serve Xgenmedia Solutions Private Limited and eRegNow.com Private Limited for another year and a half when he decided to roll out his own IT Consultancy firm name as FOURDY SOLUTIONS. FOURDY SOLUTIONS is a currently serving eRegNow.com for it’s IT infrastructure and resources for development of  eregnow.com’s other undertakings too (such as ehotelnow.com, emembernow.com) etc. FS also acts as technology partners for other companies/institutions such as Global School of Tech Juris, Alchemy Leadership School, Rose Bud School. FS also opened up website administration as a unique bit of service which has been uptilized by Kyakare.com and eRegNow.com