A journey, in two tracks
Not one straight line, but two that run in parallel — what I did for a living, and what I did to live. Red markers are the turning points.
Professional
- ★ Turning point2003–06Bangalore
A race car called Ashwa
B.E. in Mechanical Engineering at RV College of Engineering (2006). On Team Ashwa — the first Indian team at Formula SAE Australasia (Melbourne, 2005) — I worked on the car’s structure and led the cost report that won the cost event.
First time engineering, cost and a team had to come together into one real object.- FSAE
- Design
- Team
- 2006–14India · Denmark
Schneider Electric: 200+ products
Technical Lead, then Innovation Lead and Local Patent Correspondent. Owned three product ranges — Opal (India), EXXACT (Nordics) and New FUGA (Denmark) — and filed patents, two granted in Europe.
- Product design
- Patents
- Roadmaps
- ★ Turning point2009–10Denmark
Working in Denmark
Technical Lead on Danish product ranges, and Vice-President Education of a Toastmasters club.
Working and living abroad: a different design culture and a wider view of the market.- Design culture
- Leadership
- 2012–14Bangalore
Innovation, patents and Manthan
Innovation Lead for the business unit; first General Secretary of the employee library; worked with Enable India on hiring visually-impaired colleagues; wrote the iLibrary paper (ICERI 2012, Madrid); founded Manthan, a social-innovation forum.
- Innovation
- Inclusion
- ★ Turning point2014–16Philadelphia
Penn: design meets medicine
M.S.E. in Integrated Product Design, University of Pennsylvania. Product-design lead for a low-cost stroke-rehabilitation gym; co-authored an elder-care robot study (IROS 2017); UX for the Demand Response Advisor, winner of a $50K cleantech prize.
Post-graduate education that turned design instinct into a research discipline — and led directly to the first company.- Research
- Health
- Haptics
- 2016–Philadelphia
Recupero Robotics
Co-founded with the rehabilitation-robotics lab team to take the stroke-rehab gym toward patients. SBIR-backed.
- Co-founder
- Med-tech
- 2016–18North Carolina
Enterprise & ERP consulting
Techno-functional consultant on Oracle ERP, IoT, AR work instructions and blockchain proofs of concept for manufacturers and early-stage start-ups.
- Oracle
- IoT
- AR
- ★ Turning point2017–Bangalore · Toronto
Ecoshastra — the long road to a product
Founded in 2017, after a string of ideas that did not become companies. It took years of trying other things — GIS, craft, education, storytelling — before the company found its shape in incense, herbs and perfumes.
The pivot from many ideas to one patient, product-making company.- Co-founder
- Wellness
- 2018–USA · Canada
Mercedes-Benz R&D North America
External consultant. Product owner and agile coach (SAFe Program Consultant) for embedded software for electric-drive inverters, under ASPICE and ISO 26262 — and builder of in-house AI assistants for engineers.
- eDrive
- SAFe
- Functional safety
- 2019–21
Executive MBA, then MBA
Business depth added to a design and engineering foundation.
- Study
- 2024–26Toronto
Ventures at the edge of AI
Grade360, Taxila, Tensor Studio and Ecoshastra Canada — AI, education, wellness and story.
- Now
Personal
- Early yearsBah, near Agra
A semi-rural town
Joint family; a grandfather who was a farmer and an herbal healer; a father who plays music. Topper of Bah in Hindi-medium twelfth grade.
- Roots
- ★ Turning point2000
“Not selected”
I tried for the IIT entrance and the result came on 31 December 2000: not selected. The line I took from it — “never ever give up” — ended up as a speech six years later, and a motto since.
A closed door that sent me to Bangalore and, eventually, everywhere else.- Persistence
- 2003–06Bangalore
College: NSS and the team
National Service Scheme volunteering alongside Team Ashwa — the first taste of building for others.
- Service
- 2006–
Toastmasters
First speech in 2006. Club President at Schneider Bangalore, Vice-President Education in Denmark, Advanced Communicator Bronze, and MC again in 2023–24.
- Speaking
- 2009–
Teaching and giving blood
Primary-school teaching and blood-donation camps, alongside work.
- Service
- 2009–10
Cheap Thrills
A group of friends with three rules for trips: plan everything except where to go; use the cheapest, quickest transport and eat and sleep local; begin and end with the anthem.
- Travel
- Friends
- ★ Turning pointDec 2012–Jan 2013Across India, by train
Jagriti Yatra
A fifteen-day, 8,000 km train journey with hundreds of young people from small towns and villages, meeting social and business entrepreneurs along the way. I wrote a promise — “Sankalp” — to my India.
Enterprise as a way of serving, not only earning — the root of every venture since.- Enterprise
- Service
- 2014–16Philadelphia
Back to the classroom
Studying design at Penn while volunteering with One World Environment (water purification) and teaching 3D printing to the campus — workshop participation grew 32%.
- Learning
- Teaching
- ★ Turning pointRecent yearsToronto area
Canada
A new country, a new community — and a new set of ventures.
Home base for the present chapter.- Home
- Ongoing
Tabla, yoga, the Upanishads
Tabla and harmonica; a certified yoga teacher; a lifelong reader of Vedanta and the Upanishads, learning Sanskrit.
- Practice
- ★ Turning point2026
Kaivalya, by Ekaki
A 24-poem Hindi collection on the Kaivalya Upanishad, written as a dialogue with the self.
The first time the inner work became a book.- Poetry
Ideas I have explored
All of them →Before and between the companies, many ideas — some prototyped, most only sketched. A few stayed with me.
Civic & society5
Education & learning5
Media & story3
Land, geo & space2
A map of the whole
Five lenses I look through. Select one.
Make
Wiring devices, a stroke-rehab gym, a chair from yoga, a haptic vest. Design as a discipline of tolerances and care.