Polama

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Dilip Panicker was 2 years my junior in college but we are about the same age. While at college aside from his passion for computers he was and continues to be an avid musician. He was an integral part of the college band that would end up winning almost any competition they entered.

He joined a company called Madras Computer Laboratory (MCL) after his graduation. They had an Apple Mcintosh. My colleague V Balaji and I were allowed to use it at night when the rest of the staff had left. Having never used a computer before both Balaji and I were worried we would damage the machine. Dilip spent about 10 minutes with us and we were, off writing our first proposal on a computer.

Dilip left along with his colleague Shirish Purohit and started Texel Systems along with the flamboyant P G Mohan Rao.  Texel did some very exciting work in Industrial Automation on the PC platform. Dilip had intimate knowledge of the hardware and software aspects of the PC and could coax incredible performance by coding almost at the machine language level. Texel Systems was acquired and dismantled(there is a longer story on Texel systems that I may write some other time). Dilip went off to Bangalore and started on a track saying “Now I want to make money”.

Dilip and his business partner built a 50,000 sq.ft. office space in Electronics City from the earnings of their company Siri Technologies. The company did back office work for larger companies and Bank of America was one of their bigger clients.

Dilip left Siri and is currently pursuing his passion for travel, building the backend software for Polama (http://www.polama.com/).  Polama is run by another IITM B-Tech, M D Ramaswamy (who is also a serial entrepreneur). They recently raised their first round of funding. See  http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Polamacom_gets_Angel_Funding-nid-91381-cid-100.html