1988: A CURIOUS, RESTLESS AND CAREFREE CHILD
I was five when I dived in a well assuming I could already swim and indeed I floated for a while but then, of course, I was saved by my father from drowning. Few days passed and I was already a nimble swimmer. Born in a farmer's house, rural part of Maharashtra, I used to be always hungry – hungry to know how things worked.
I was twelve when I saw & experienced computer, the internet, and watching films without television or theater for the first time. Overwhelmed by the sheer efficiency of knowing about anything and everything sitting at home, with no time, it got me so fascinated that I sat the entire day in front of the computer – playing games, reading Wikipedia pages, or interacting with strangers.
I wasn’t the smart kid in the school but curiosity always got me involved in knowing or participating in school administrative work.
2006-2009: STRING LANGUAGES = "C, C++, JAVA"; SYSTEM.OUT.PRINT(“HELLO WORLD” + LANGUAGES);
When almost everyone in the town was either pursuing arts or science after high school, I was bored with studying theories – I decided to apply for Computer Applications (BCA). The course introduced the magic of programming languages and among all I developed a crush for C# and ASP .NET.
In the final semester, along with one of my classmates (thanks to him for making graduation fun & joyful), I chose E-classified website portal as a project assignment. Classified ads was my favorite topic and very unusual to choose for academic projects when medical software was most common. For the front-end design and with a whole lot of functionalities both for user & back-end admin using C#, AJAX and ASP .NET, we not only received good grades for the project we did but we also got appreciated from the teachers & classmates.
2009-2014: NET, NET, INTERNET
The great recession, Aug 2009, was the period when I passed my graduation, and getting hired as a fresher was the task of moving mountains. No company was willing to hire freshers. I was even rejected for call center jobs. As a routine, on a sunny morning, I was looking through newspaper ads hoping to come across relevant job openings; however, what I stumbled-upon instead was an interesting story titled 'Net, Net, Internet'. The story covered how people were using the internet to share and learn ideas through blogging and forum websites. Young kids in town used Orkut, Myspace, Twiter, Hi5, and likes of platforms to connect with people whom they never met. All this fascinated me so much that it led me to join an agency that primarily focused on providing Search Engine Optimization services (SEO) where I learned how to optimize webpages for better search engine as well as how to cheat search engine crawler.
We would boast about the website ranking in search engines and not share our secret tactics. Have you heard about 'Link wheeling?' It's the one of those techniques that I am not proud of practicing.
NOW: GREASING THE SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS WITH DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE
By 2014, I worked with more than 5 agencies but I wasn't willing to settle. I was constantly feeling that I am left behind something essential in my career; however, I wasn't sure what it was. I remember one day while scrolling through Linkedin timeline a message popped saying whether if I'd be interested in working for a Sports marketing analytics and intelligence firm called Repucom -- I was instantly excited about the job. Although, I didn't have experience and much knowledge about sports business, quite thrilling I was asked to design and deliver digital intelligence for sports franchises and sponsors.
I studied global best practices, many user manuals and a lot of experimenting to derive solutions that answered sports business queries. Since then, for the past 6 years, I have employed digital intelligence to influence the change in the way sports franchises engage with fans, athletes, and, sponsors...