GrexIt turns email into a collaboration tool

My startup journey started in May 2007, with my first startup Mobicules. We wanted to build a mobile application that would allow people to do local search, with no dependence on network connection. We quit our jobs, built a prototype, and then, it bombed. We, then, built this really innovative service called "NeverBlinks", which would connect to IP cameras in your come over internet, monitor them for activity, and trigger email and SMS alerts if it found anything amiss. This one, too, came crashing down in just three months.

Eight months into our entrepreneurial lives, with two failures and almost all our saving evaporated, we started building Facebook and web applications for other companies and this business thrived. We quickly signed up a lot of customers, hired some very quality engineers and doing good business.

And then, in 2011, the bug hit again, and that led to us starting GrexIt. The idea behind GrexIt was simple - if there was one tool that I had used every day in my 'professional life' to collaborate with my colleagues, it was email. And yet, email was the source of so much clutter, confusion and information overload. We wanted to fix email as a collaboration tool, almost as a token of our gratitude to this great utility.

We started with a simple solution that would let teams share email easily among team-members by adding them to shared, centralized archive/repository. This would helps teams get past mad scrambles to find that file or that email that is lying in the inbox of someone who is not in office today, or even worse, has left the company six months back. Indeed, email inboxes is where knowledge goes to die, and we could fix this problem very well with our solution.

And then we extended our product to target the broader collaboration problem, and transformed GrexIt into a product that helps teams assign tasks, know their status and share information, right from their email inboxes. GrexIt is now an email collaboration tool, and we were recently covered by TechCrunch!

The rate at which we've been signing up customers has been very exciting, and we look forward to improving GrexIt to become a simple, powerful tool that helps people collaborate seamlessly.

Omkara: Music Review

With Omkara, Vishal Bharadwaj very clearly drifts from his original style of composing. He, till now, had for the most parts, relied on clear vocals, minimal orchestration, and his trademark un-traditional tunes which, on the surface, did not subscribe completely to any established style of music. Very little of his music could be classified under categories such Qawwali, Sufi or having clear classical undertones. Moreover, till now, he relied mostly on minimal arrangement, just the amount of musical instrumentation that could give the song the right ambience. Omkara marks a departure in both the regards.

The brilliance of Omkara is in the way Vishal Bharadwaj takes established styles and traditional tunes under his wings, gives them his touch, and makes them his very own. Add to this the elaborate, sophisticted arrangements, some talented musicians, a very intelligent singer selection, Gulzar's lyrics ranging from sublime poetry to risque innuendo, and we have a treat for our ears.

The title song is a Sukhwindara show all the way. Well, almost all songs sung by this singer of singers are his show all the way. The way he renders it, with his characteristic now-in-control, now-lost-control, now-back-in-control way of singing, that he at times, completely overshadows the heavy orchestration. The lyrics talk about the fearsome outlaw that Omkara is, and Gulzar, the Master of Metaphors, excels:

"Aankhen tej tatayya jaisi, jeebh saanp ka fankaara."

The tune is a very traditional one. But Vishal's treatment with the heavy percussions and the backing vocals, Sukhwindara's rendition, and the lyrics lift it many notches up.


Other two very noteworthy songs in the album are Nayna and Beedi. Nayna is rendered by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who makes a 180 degrees departure from the kind of reputation he has built by singing songs like "Lagan lagi". This song again, has a very traditional tune, a song based on which I last heard in the album Kailasa by Kailash Kher (Jaana Jogi de Naal, the song based on Bulle Shah's lyrics. Kailash Kher renders it very competently.) But again, Vishal makes the tune his very own, and provides it with a very correct ambience. Gulzar shines again:

"Nainon ki jubaan pe bharosa naheen aata.
Likhat padhat na raseed na khaata.
Saari baat hawaai re, saari baat hawaai."

Beedi, in contrast, is laced with innuendo of the arty kind. It is tangential in referring to what it wants to refer to, but yet, is right there:

"Kitni sardi hai kisi ka lihaaf lei le,
Jaa padosi ke chulhe se aag lei le."

Sukhwindara, again does his job to perfection. But one must note Sunidhi Chauhan here. She proves she is supremely gifted. Her voice spans many octaves. And she has a spirit that shines through in such a song. And again, Vishal Bharadwaj lifts it far up from what the song could have been easily mistaken for : a front-seat puller from a Govinda movie.

O Saathi Re has Vishal and Shreya Ghoshal doing the honours. Lyrics by Gulzar alternate between metaphors and sweet-small-talk. This is a trademark Vishal Bharadwaj song, low pitched, minimal instruments, and a dreamy ambience. Shreya Ghoshal does perfect justice to the song, and Vishal gives himself the right song to sing. Hope we see him singing more often. The song has an interlude on the guitar which is very nicely played.
Jag Ja, sung by Suresh Wadkar, again has lyrics of the sweet-small-talk variety, which only Gulzar can write. Suresh Wadkar does a nice job here, but I would have loved to see a subtle change in his expression when he shifts from the loving "ari jag ja" to the frustrated "mari jag ja".

That brings us to the two songs sung by Rekha Bharadwaj, last heard in the album Ishqa Ishqa and the soundtrack for Maqbool. Namak is "Main aai hoon UP bihar lootne" for the sophisticated with a finer taste of music. The lyrics have just the right nuances, in fact they are more true to the set-up than the song just mentioned. The musical arrangement has a clear air of sophistication (I could hear a snatch of the electric guitar with distortion), and Rekha Bharadwaj renders it like a modern day Asha Bhosle, given the nice touches she puts in.

Laakad picks up from where Ishqa Ishqa left. The tune is reminiscent of songs from the album, but again, the musical arrangement is many notches up. There is a small guitar interlude between the two antaras, which is just the kind of thing that elevates a song from good to great. Rekha Bharadwaj, as expected, comes up trumps in the song. Its her home territory.

Omkara is Vishal Bharadwaj in a new Avatar. With his musical brilliance intact. We don't mind such re-incarnations, do we?

Failing and ailing.

Many movements, little action.
Only digressions, no direction.
Some sacrilege,
Some offence,
But all, all, stupid.

Most of it, useless babble.
One messed up game of scrabble.
Some vowels,
Most consonants,
All, all, scattered.

Ideas crooked, thoughts crippled.
Half actions, minds stifled.
Walk hindered,
Run hurdled,
Stopping and falling.

Trying to run, running to reach.
Running to reach, running to hide.
Always running,
Never reaching,
Failing and ailing.

----------------------------

PS: Inspired by a bout of mild flu, an un-tuned guitar, and a very general sense of "ill-being" creditable largely to the decreasing efficacy of All-Out in annihilating mosquitoes.

Dadu

Dadu passed away last sunday. It was not sudden, and we were expecting it. It was after more than three years of uncomfortable, even painful existence on a bed with half of his body paralyzed, and his speech completely impaired. But he was there. He was still there, a permanent presence on that bed. I could not think of my house without him.

It was only in the last few months when I had come face to face with the fact that soon, he would go. He had not spoken for a very long time, and I am not sure how much he understood of what we said. But still, whenever I would visit home, I would tell him all about my life in Delhi, and about my trips abroad. I was sure he understood some of it, for I did not miss the feeble smiles and the odd tear. Whenever I would go out of the house even for an hour, and pass his bed, I would always tell him I was leaving, a habit from old times. To me, dadu lying powerless on the bed had a more commanding presence than most others in the house.

Dadu loved us. He loved everybody. I very clearly remember lying on a bed in the verandah of the house on a summer night, when I was no more than seven or eight years old, with dadu sitting at my feet, telling a perfectly believable story about two rabbits who collaborated with a deer to kill the tiger, the jungle tyrant. Much to our pleasure, he would never run out of stories, as he could always come up with variations of the master story about a bunch of feeble animals bashing up the tiger. He knew what we liked.

When I grew somewhat older, I had a tutor who would come home to teach. Dadu would always sit there, or in hearing distance, and monitor the teacher to know if he really was doing fine. He would play badminton with me in the house when none of my friends turned up in the evening. It was difficult for him, but he did all he could. He even played cricket with me, I remember, holding the bat very awkwardly with his hand. Of course he could not run, nor did he need to. It was enough for me that I actually had someone to play with.

He would always save us from the hands of our strict "disciplinarian" mother. It was due to him that I could sometimes escape taking bath on winters. And he would come to my sister's rescue when she was in for an impending bashing from ma because she could not figure out how many decagrams made a ton.
We grew up, and there were no more stories to tell, and no more bashings to save us from. But I knew that there was nothing that pained dadu more than seeing us unhappy.

Dadu's death was not a shock. It was coming. I met him only one week before he passed away, and I had told him I would see him again soon. He had, with much difficulty, raised his hand to hold mine. Then, much as I knew he isn't with us for long, I hadn't known I would not see him again.

When I heard of his death, I did not even cry. It was not something that could break someone down. It is, I now realize, a quiet, subtle feeling of loss. One that hits you without warning, as you lie on your bed on a quiet, dark night.

Buying a cell phone

My needs, for me, are compartmentalized into Necessity and Vanity. Of course, there are grey areas. But I manage to keep most of if in black and white. And that, I count as a success. A very fundamental one. Where I go, what I do and what I buy are results of long, dirty fights between necessity and vanity. But I know what is where. It helps me reach compromises. It helps the cause of a cease-fire.

To recount an experience, let us take my car-hunting an year back that ended with my buying a Fiat Petra 1.6. Quite shamelessly, I love talking about it. I am a proud owner. Here's the story for you:

I want a car. Any would do. Should be spacious, sturdy, comfortable, and not very expensive. Not many would do. I like the Fiat Palio. Till now, it is a matter of necessity.
Now vanity speaks. A Palio? Don't tell me. Too common. Nothing special. You want to show off. Let me tell you. You want to show off. You must. After all, whats life without some spice?

The Palio is dumped. Budget constraints in mind, I settle for a Corsa 1.4. But want to have a look at Fiat Petra too. I walk into the Fiat showroom. There, standing right in front of me, is a shining Red Palio Sport. The Corsa killer. Its a beauty. Marry it, says vanity. Okay, I say. Its expensive. Just like Vanity wants it to be.

Necessity speaks. Spending so much on a small car? Have you sent half of your grey matter on a sabbatical? Buy the Petra. It is slightly costlier than the Red Beauty, but would keep you happier in the long run. Vanity agrees, for entirely different reasons though. Vanity loves a big car. Great show-off value. Vanity loves it when I look like a big shot.

Agreement reached. I book the Petra. Every one is happy. It is like two enemies sleeping on the same bed. Or rather, fighting for the same steering wheel.

Now, as I write it, I am in the middle of a protracted tussle between the two. I want to buy a cell phone. Till now, all my phone purchases have been necessity driven. I have been picking up from the bottom of the bin. The cheapest ones. For what is a phone for, other than to just talk. But now, fed up of carrying the stupid piece of electronics in my pocket like some dead weight, I have decided to get something that really deserves being taken everywhere. Something that is not just a rudimentary device to talk and text, but is a worthy escort. Vanity.

Being the Man of Technology that I am, I do a thorough search on the net about whats latest and best. I rule out Nokia, as I find Nokias to be too bulky, without there being any necessity for them to be so (I am writing this at a Nokia R&D site, using their workstation, their facilities, when I am supposed to be working on their 3G chip design. Talk of betrayal). There is nothing special that a 6600 or 3230 does that justifies their bulkiness. On one hand, you fight to make a transistor fit on 0.03 micron of silicon. On the other hand, you make a phone which does not get into your jeans pocket. Paradox.

My requirements are well defined. It should be a real gizmo, top of the line. The phone counterpart of an iPod. The Concord among airplanes. The Ferrari among cars. Vanity. At the same time, it should be sleek, not bulky, functional, and a performer. Necessity.

After a scan of the Indian GSM handset market, I zero in on two phones. The best Camera Phone, and the best compact PDA phone. The Sony Ericsson K750i is the former. The Sony Ericsson P910i is the latter.

The Sony Ericsson K750i has the best phone camera now, throughout the world. I do not say it because of its 2.0 Mega Pixels resolution. Only a naive camera user would say that, and I am not one. It has good optics, Auto Focus, Exposure Compensation, and automatic White Balance setting, along with an AF assist diode, that can also double up as a weak flash. If the jargon is quite a mouthful, then in simpler terms, it means that it is quite a lot for a phone camera to have. In image quality, it beats the Nokia N90 hands down, which is Nokia's best camera phone. The K750i is small, very sleek, light, and disappears into the pocket. It also plays MP3, but that does not impress me because my iPod does that much better. The grouse? It looks like any camera phone. It does not shake the earth when it comes to this department. And to certain parts of me, this department matters.

The P910i is the kind of thing that Announces your Entrance. It has a very big, high resolution screen. A QWERTY keyboard. Can open word, pdf, excel documents. It beats other PDAs like O2 XDA and i-Mate JAM because of its comparative sleekness. Everything pleases vanity. But there is a lot that another department does not like. The camera is a rudimentary VGA, fixed focus. And who wants to open word documents while on the move. I don't work when in office. Talk of working on the move. Makes me laugh.

Currently they are at loggerheads. I am an extremely shutter-happy person. I see photographic opportunities all the time. But my camera, like most cameras, is not exactly the thing I would like to always carry in my pocket. The K750i, is an agreeable surrogate to my camera. But the heart speaks loud. With the P910i, I can make my shot at looking like a star. It sets my pulse racing.

The turmoil is on.

The American

The American guy does have a sense of humor. He is a Solutions Architect. In understandable terms, he interacts with the customers interested in the product we build, and works with them to develop methodologies to effectively use the product. In one way, he is a part of the team that sells our product.

He nags me constantly. It is the usual Sales vs R&D thing. He nags me about everything from the product's error messages, to its instability, to its (un)usability, to its "un-sellability", to its name. And he always appends it with a light-hearted "Now C'mon buddy, don't take it seriously". To on-lookers, he says "Just fooling with my guy". At Nokia, I am his guy.

I listen to him. I don't take him seriously. He is fifteen years my senior. And he is definitely entitled to his opinions.

And I quite like him, besides his nagging. He works hard, knows how to laugh at himself, and owns up to his mistakes when he makes them. He makes one that makes us lose three days, and the Nokia guys come and tell us they have a rule around the place. It goes like this: If you make a mistake, that is entirely your doing, needs more than one day to figure out and fix, and you also involve others in fixing it, then you drive down to some fancy pastry shop downtown, and buy pastry for everyone affected by your blunder. The American agrees to do it, and adds, "Okay guys, you eat cake. I'll eat humble pie."

When someone jokes about our eating cake when the project is in very bad shape, he quips, "Isn't that like the Mary Antoinette thing? Why don't they eat cake if they don't have bread?"

Now, thats funny. By any standards.

Dining in Copenhagen

Nokia is to host a dinner for us. Not that there is an occasion that calls for it. The project is still stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no shore in sight. But Wade, the big American guy, is leaving tomorrow, and if there has to be a dinner, it has to be today.

So at 6:30, we head out. We reach Nyhavn, one of the many canals in Copenhagen, and launch into a search for a nice place to eat in. This is difficult in Copehnhagen, mind you, because every one in two establishments is an eating place. The Danish eat a lot, but it does not show on them. They are all fit and athletic.

But coming back to the hunt. Our group is a queer one. Two French, two Danish, one American and an Indian. The Danish speak English like any American, the French manage, and I am somewhere in between. The Danish have something in mind for the restaurant. And in trying to do a random search for a specific place in the restaurant lined streets around Nyhavn, we land up at quite the wrong places. One such is a restaurant called TopDollar, which gives the American a big scare. The Danish laughingly apologize, and continue with the search.

When we finally get there, it is not like anything that I have seen before. The table has been laid out for six, but there are four glasses per person there. If they are all going to be used, then I want to rethink eating here. But I do not have much of a choice. One of the Dans has already taken the liberty of ordering a five course meal with four wines. A girl in black arrives, and tells us about the menu. It is in English, with a smattering of French words for the ingredients used in the food. She puts up a nice show, quite intimidating for me. I tell her, quite apologizingly that I am a vegetarian, but I can have some chicken. She asks if I can have duck, and does so in a manner that I can not refuse. I don't. My fate is sealed. I am to eat duck today. Quite against my will. I know I would not like it. I am doing no better today than the dead duck I would soon be eating.

We drink four wines, the last one a dessert wine. The dessert wines have low alcoholic content, and are sweetened. But the ones before that, the REAL ones, are heavy duty stuff. The first two are white. Everyone except me joins in a discussion on wines. There is quite a consensus that the first one "just disappears from over the tongue", while the second one has a "buttery taste". To me, they all taste quite the same. The red one is heavier than the white ones, but that is all I can say. I do not even get close to dreaming up quaint descriptions like "disappearing from over the tongue" for wines.

The American is a nice guy. But he is a snob. He says his annual wine budget is forty to forty-five thousand American Dollars. He might have said it under the effect of alcohol, but that is enough to give me a complex, as that is twice what I manage to earn in India. He drinks up the salary of two engineers like me. That is a humiliating thought. I hate the American. I swear I do.

The dishes are all queer. But there is one commonality that I do not miss. They all come in plates much bigger than they need to come in. It makes them look very less and inadequate. And actually, they are much lesser than one would like to eat. Not more than three or four spoonfuls. But I have the idea that everyone is quite enjoying it. With five westerners, I do not have the option of not enjoying it. Even if it is bland tasting, half cooked rice (Risotto) with some very absurd tasting sea-food (mussels). Three glasses of wine only help the purpose. I would, now, have found it easy to enjoy just about anything. After three glasses of wine, life is, in general, good.

It ends with a dessert. Finally, something I can make sense of. It all tastes sweet. Finally, something that tastes like it is supposed to. Everyone seems to have enjoyed the dinner. The American thanks the Danish guys profusely. Everyone is happy, we head home. On the way back, one of the French guys, Rochdi, walks with me. We start talking, and I ask him if this really was typical French food. He says, yes, but it was as weird for him as it was for me. It is not everyday that one eats like this, not even in France. And not every restaurant there serves food like this.

So it is not just me, a disadvantaged third-worlder that sees it like that. The French agrees! I get some of my pride back. Maybe, in Copenhagen, I am not ALWAYS off the mark.