Mr. Ajay Poddar
Man Behind neelkanthpalms.com

1. Tell us something about yourself?
I am Ajay Poddar, working as a DGM - Software Development for India's most successful portal (Shaadi.com) leading its entire development team. A commerce graduate and have also done my postgraduate diploma from C-DAC. Being in the technology field I am high on my learning curve and everyday is a new challenge with a new peak conquered.

I have a lovely wife Ritu and am blessed with 2 sons Krish and Kunj.
I have been living in thane since birth and am in love with this fabulous city.

2. Tell us about neelkanthpalms.com.
NeelkanthPalms.com is a blog to communicate with the members of the complex...
A place where people can post articles for knowledge transfer, sort out grievances, etc.
It helps a lot for the people who have flats in the complex, but are staying far from Mumbai. Using this site they get updates on what’s happening.

3. Can you please tell us the initiation of your neelkanthpalms.com?
Some time after I bought a flat in Neelkanth Palms, Thane... In July 2006 I bought the domain NeelkanthPalms.com ...
I was not sure how I would build this domain, but wanted to block the domain then, hence I bought it.
In 2007 after a lot of perseverance, is when NeelkanthPalms.com was made live.

4. Any homework, for your fantastic idea?
The online web i.e. Internet, is my home turf. Having an experience of more than 10 years exclusive in this field it was easy. The challenge was to execute it, as I had to make my work a hobby and build this site. It could not keep me away for long and within a year I launched it.

5. Are you getting the right response you had dreamed about?
Yes, the response is as expected... All people on the move know from where to get the latest updates. You know of events as they are planned.
I am planning to setup the free SMS service (google, smsgupshup) to enable members receive updates related to the complex on their mobile.

6. Any specific achievements?
This has brought our entire society together. People have a space where they can voice their opinions. In meetings the time is limited and you always have the feeling that I could not get my valid point across. Here you can say what you want, whenever you want, whatever you feel. It’s a bigger family staying in a big joint family.
I have people coming up and asking me about the site and wanting to implement the same for their society.

7. Any message for Thaneites?
We should make maximum use of technology to help ourselves and the community at large. We should let technology work for us. Let us keep our environment in harmony with nature and keep our city clean and green always.

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- As told to Thaneweb (May 2009)