Hello fellow human!

What a phenomenal age to live in, the year 2019 — a time when BILLIONS of us are constantly getting more connected. Every. single. moment.

This year is a huge one for me, a lot transformed after constantly traveling to and living in 40+ cities in the US, Europe, and SE Asia. I am grateful to be born in this age where living and working from anywhere is possible, while witnessing our incredible planet. Funnily though, the most common thing I saw in our world is people having a bent neck, constantly looking at our complex universe through these pixels on a tiny rectangular glass. …

It’s the year 2019 on earth and I am 28 years old now. People of my age are classified as millennials. We are witnessing evolving times our internet era has brought forth— this always-on, interconnected earth, and I am grateful to be in this age. It brings unlimited ups and downs to our daily living — comparisons, distractions, career, friends, family, chats, achievements, stresses, sharing, impatience, social media, everything on demand, and hyper connectivity.

Trying to deal with all these parameters, my mind has managed to operate at it’s full potential and I write to share that.

Early on

I experienced multiple deaths in my family as a child. Those tough experiences always made me feel that we are gonna die anyway so what’s the point to all this life. You are just living, living, living — then one day you go to sleep, and the next day you don’t wake up. It’s simple like that. No drama, nothing fancy. I have grown up through those struggles, and no matter how achieving I have appeared to the world outside — inside me there always has been a place of deep hurt, of why all those things happened, and if there is a true meaning to all this we call a “life”. …

This is the first of my letters to the unknown, as I start my daily journey to be thankful for the beautiful life I have been given. I will write in detail about one thing I am grateful for every single morning after I wake up. This is my conscious effort to break the limiting pattern of thinking through language our minds get caught up with while growing up — and I aim to break the stressful programming of our overly competitive modern world. …

I am the red notification dot on your iPhone,

I make sure you keep seeing me.

I’ll create new tasks for you to finish,

Come on, just tap on me.

Remember to share this with your developer friends, maybe they thank will you one day.

Edit : Changed the startup’s name to “ShopConnect” and removing graphics containing the original name for the sake of privacy.

It all started in 2016, when we were taking a walk around the local stores in Connaught Place (New Delhi) during the time of the rapidly changing mobile internet scene in India. I was meeting my college friend after long who had some thoughts about starting a new business. Over some discussions, we conceptualised the idea and started designing a business case around it. We named it ShopConnect.

In mid 2013, I started my first job as a game programmer at Gameloft Studios in Guadalajara, Mexico. I was part of a team of six that shipped the Android version for Disney Pixar’s title, Cars© Fast as Lightning. Cars currently has 50–100 Million installs on the Android play store. The game got million downloads in the first 3 weeks! Though it was a larger than life experience to write about and share, I am just going over some quick learnings in this article.

Here are the 8 things I learned

#1 — Deliver high quality work. Always.

Gameloft partnered with Disney to build and launch their mobile game. The game had to be as high standard as the Disney Cars movie. Even a pixel detail that showed for a moment in the user’s journey was given high attention. As this was the start of my career it taught me the importance of writing high quality software. …

I had my homecoming to India on a midnight of January 2015, after a month of backpacking in Mexico, and freezing on the streets of New York. Ever since that night I landed, I’ve been hustling to build one of the best dining experiences you can get in the world at Zomato.

At Zomato, I primarily code the iOS app but I work in different teams on whatever helps to build the best products for us. I do ideation, conceptualisation, prototyping, and development.

Links to the consumer apps I have built and shipped at Zomato —

In February 2018, we released an overhauled design of the Zomato iOS app. I had the privilege of writing a post announcing all the changes we’ve made in this milestone release. Also, if you happen to land on the login page of the app, I made the french fries GIF that you see there! (What do you think of it?) The animation is currently shown as the welcome page on all Zomato consumer apps. Would love your feedback! You can comment below. …