• Grade I-X from Kendriya Vidyalaya (Malleswaram-Bangalore, Dinnapur Cannt-Patna, ASC-Bangalore).
• PUC (XI & XII) from National College, Basavangudi (Bangalore). Our PUC exams was very eventful (in the wrong way). We had re-exams after re-exams and finally the govt decide to introduce CET from our batch.
• Under Graduate Degree (B.E.) in Computer Science & Engineering from SJCE, Mysore.
• Graduate Degree from University of Alabama at Birmingham (MS in CSE)
• Graduate Certificate in Internet Security from George Mason University (did not complete as I decided to return to India)

My on campus job at Department of Biomedical Engineering gave me great exposure to Unix System Administration. I owe “everything” to my System Admin Guru Bruce Williams who encouraged me to experiment things on “his” server to sharpen my Unix system admin skills. My boss, Dr. Ernest Stokely, was simply amazing. I don’t say this because he liked my work and Indian cooking. He treated me “very” well, he taught me how to deal with system issues (Dr. Stokely had good working knowledge of Sun OS). The only problem with Dr. Stokely was that when he moved to UAB he brought along his “oooooold” Sun 390 server (system name ‘agnos’). It was a pig, it was always going down and even Sun Microsystems had stopped supporting it!! The fun part of working in such departments is the naming of systems. The one I use to work was named as “amnese” (amnesia).

I graduated from UAB at the wrong time – Gulf War It was very difficult to find a job in the US. No company wanted to deal with F1 visa, H1-B visa etc. I was very active on Usenet from early 1990s (soc.culture.indian, soc.culture.indian.karnataka, alt.visa.us and system admin groups). Through these groups I met John Goodsen, who was having some problems with a Solbourne Workstation. This system was very similar to Sun and I was able to solve his technical problems. John was working at EVB Engineering which specialized in ADA related work. John immediately showed interest in hiring me but the company wasn’t sure about sponsoring my trip from Alabama to Frederick, Maryland for an interview. I waited..waited..they never called back. So I “lied” to them that I was in Washington DC area and I “could possibly” drop in at EVB for a meeting. They immediately agreed. Needless to say I went all the way to Frederick only for the interview I was offered a job within 15 minutes, John did not want to lose me and I did not want to lose the job! A perfect win-win situation.

At EVB I worked on a GUI Builder (GRAMMI – Generated Reusable Ada Man Machine Interface) which was developed in ADA, truly a beautiful structured programming language. EVB was also into ADA training. I did get “free ADA training” from my colleague John Halper, but boy he was merciless when it came to assignments in ADA My other colleague Brandon Goldfedder introduced me to the web. He was a true “toys” guy – he wanted to buy every new thing that was available for a PC. The introduction to the web changed my career and life. No regrets ofcourse. At EVB we frequently had Microsoft Vs Opensource arguments.

I started hosting my personal website on fred.net. It was a collection of all India related information that was important for a NRI. The topics on the site that were very popular (early 1990s) were,

• How to send money to India from US?
• Which was the cheapest Long Distance carrier to call India ?
• US Immigration FAQ – this is popular even today and people still write to me asking about US Visas. I forward all these requests to immigration.com

My personal site had gained very good traction amongst NRIs. In 1995 I decided to rename it as mahesh.com. At the same time I asked my good friend Rajiv S. Khanna (yes, I know he is a lawyer!) to reserve immigration.com and he told me “BG, you just do it for me”. I moved the US Immigration FAQ to immigration.com as I thought it more apt for Rajiv to maintain it.

Indiainfo.com
In 1999 I met Raj Koneru and decided to start indiainfo.com in Bangalore. Internet was big in the US at that time and people were expecting the phenomenon to repeat in India. It was a very interesting experience for me – hiring & managing people for the portal. There were very few who understood portal then. I was always concentrating on the core part of the portal – content and technical. I could/can write, I could/can understand technical issues. It is a wonderful combination to have. I had my share of designations “Co-Founder & President – Portal”, “Co-Founder & CTO” and finally “Co-Founder & CEO”.

In early 2000 I initiated the launch of Indian languages on the internet. We didn’t know how well it would do but I should say we did well by all standards. There was a huge followership for our language portals from NRIs based in US.

By August 2000 the entire Internet portal scene changed in India – majority of the portals shut. Rather, all fly by night operators disappeared. Many at indiainfo.com were asked to leave, many quit on their own. It was a painful phase of my life. Wasn’t sure what to do as the company had grown in multiple cities. It was decided the company had to be “right sized” which was the correct decision. The media spanked us but then who pays the bills? The company, not the media. We had many issues to take care of and it was then I was made the CEO of the company. It was a challenge which I took upon myself. Had to learn all aspects of running a company “without money” ! My friends tell me that I learnt management lessons on the job which no MBA school can teach. Cool.

I had some of the finest people working with me in the portal (content and technical) who supported me in keeping the show on. It is not easy to keep a portal going without any marketing budget and funding but we successfully did it. In Dec 2005 I exited indiainfo.