Satish>> Chetan, could you tell us something about yourself – your background, where you are based?

Chetan>> I am born and raised in Chandigarh, India’s most beautiful city. I am a computer engineer by both qualification and profession, and a MBA from Melbourne Business School (UQ/MtEliza). In 2000 I moved to Australia; worked and stayed there for six years before coming back to India in 2006, year I put my hands on Rails, to start Mortar Systems. I have worked on government projects in Australia for different verticals such as Transport, Healthcare etc.

Satish>> Could you tell us a little more about your company?

Chetan>> Mortar Systems is a small IT boutique where we provide services such as product engineering, web/mobile development and business IT consulting to small and micro enterprises for verticals ranging from retail to high-tech. The technologies we use are open-source such as Ruby, Java, Python, SugarCRM etc. We are also partner with SUN in their Startup Essential program for India; with this we can provide discounted software / hardware for our product engineering customers.

Typically we follow Agile model and craftsmanship practices. We have experience in providing Scrum and XP training / consulting to some of the IT shops in India.

Satish>> Getting back to your comnpany, what are your future plans?

Chetan>> Currently we are a team 4 developers, thus our future plan for the next 2 years is to grow this team to at least 50, and build up some expertise in any of the two verticals of our target market. We have successfully signed up a 3 years contract with an outsourced Sales firm, so finger crossed!

Satish>> Anything else you would like to add?

Chetan>> I would like to add my thoughts on the current IT resources market in India. Nowadays I see a lot of startups coming out of India but not many out of them making it big on international (or even national) circuit. The problem I foresee is that most of these startups are unable to get good team members because the college graduates (not IITs, NITs) just don’t want to work for them, or just are not skilled enough. I can’t say much on when the education standards in India will rise, but would like to point out a few startups portals like http://workforastartup.in or others which can help Indian startups to hire really potential talent.

Thank you Chetan.