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Email: krishnareddy (at) iitbombay (dot) org

Krishna Reddy

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Résumé

Résumé of K V Krishna Reddy

Objective and Summary

To achieve excellence in product design and innovation in online media and mobile technologies, that would contribute to mankind progress – not only materially but also spiritually, and feel a sense of accomplishment for a high-impact product well-designed. I would like to work with an organization that has a conducive and rich work culture and environment that would nurture my creativity so that I can effectively utilize my analytical, creative and mathematical skills as well as harness spiritual wisdom to bring out a new generation of world class (media and IT) products.
An ‘unconventional’ software engineer, I have over eight years of experience in software product design and development in the domains of mobile services and online media industry. All of this is in taking applications from their initial conceptualization to their launch and operations. I have done several product innovations and automations during my professional career.

Professional Achievements

  • Automated many mobile products and processes at rediff.com. This saves thousands of man hours every month across multiple teams. I conceptualized, initiated, designed and implemented these automations. They have not only enhanced efficiency but also increased revenues and later it has become a popular trend in the company across several departments.
  • Received many email and verbal compliments from CEO’s, vice presidents, directors etc for exemplary performance and innovative products and ideas.

Education

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Master of Science in Physics.

Professional Experience

  • Founder & Managing Director, iDiya Business Lab Pvt Ltd, 2018 Oct to present

  • Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Xklsv Media Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, 2009 – 2010

Designed and built a community portal and a travel portal that aim to be among the leading online media portals. Mentored and guided the software, product development and other departments in order to deliver timely results.

  • Consultant, Web, Online Media and Mobile Services, March 2009 – Current

I provide consultancy in the field of Online Media and mobile Value Added Services (VAS).

  • Senior Software Engineer, Rediff.com (Nasdaq: REDF), Mumbai, November 2003 – February 2009

(Company profile: Rediff.com is India’s leading portal and online media company with about 5 million page views every day and over 100 million registered users. Rediffmail, Rediff’s flagship product (It is a web based email service) gets about 1.3 million unique logins every day.
My Role: I designed, implemented, and deployed the software products and was the team lead for almost all of the projects mentioned below. And I played a vital role in designing most of the products and conceptualized many of them. After their launch, I built operational infrastructure for monitoring and maintenance. Other responsibilities included recruiting, inducting, training and mentoring new team members; interacting and coordinating the projects with multiple teams like Product management, Content management, Operations management, Editorial, sales and marketing departments and clients and vendors.
Technologies Used: Most of the products were built using Perl language. Some of the other technologies I used have been mentioned in the technical skills section of this document.)

  • SMS and WAP push manager: Conceptualized, designed and developed this biggest revenue generator for rediff mobile business. This is a fully automated system for creating; scheduling, sending and managing SMS and WAP push promotions. This is an excellent marketing tool for promoting Rediff’s SMS and WAP services/products. This platform includes a full-fledged web-based interface for real-time monitoring and operations, identifying and fixing SMS/WAP push connectivity problems with the mobile operators. Every day about two million SMS and WAP push messages are sent out using this platform. One of the most admired of my products, a special celebration was arranged by top management in recognition and appreciation of this initiative.
  • Rediffmail
    • Paid accounts for Rediffmail: Architected and developed a scalable and distributed platform for provisioning, deprovisioning and sending out expiry alert mailers for the paid accounts of the prestigious rediffmail, i.e. Rediffmail Plus, Rediffmail Mobile, POP3 and SMS packs. This system involves handling the distributed architecture of rediffmail that is spread over multiple servers in multiple data centers (like VSNL, Reliance, Bharti, NetMagic) in order to update data on the NFS mount points (all of them are NetApp storage devices) mounted on these servers.
    • Rediffmail on WAP: Designed and developed mobile WAP version of Rediffmail, Rediffmail pro and Rediffmail Enterprise pro.
    • Rediffmail on SMS: Developed SMS version of Rediffmail and Rediffmail pro.
    • Rediffmail alerts: Developed a system that sends out SMS alerts of email-summary to webmail users, subject to a set of predefined constraints (like limiting the number of alerts per a calendar day to a fixed number unless and until the user sends an SMS back to the rediff mobile short code 57333).
  • STK/DP5/DP6 for BSNL, MTNL and Reliance (One of the first projects I did during my stint at Rediff)
    • Developed a robust content delivery platform for Value Added Services (VAS) under SIM Tool Kits (STK) for the cellular operators BSNL, MTNL and Reliance. Also developed DP5/DP6 services for BSNL for similar content. The following are the services developed under STK/DP5/DP6:
      • News – Breaking, National, International, etc.
      • Financial – Stocks (NSE, BSE, NASDAQ), Forex
      • Entertainment – dating, jokes, Contests, Games, Movie reviews etc.
      • TV Schedule – Sports, Movies, Serials
      • Travel – Airlines, Railways
      • Downloads – Logos, Ringtones, Picture Messages
      • Astrology – Horoscope, Numerology, Shubh Kaal, Birthday Forecast
      • Cricket – Scores, News, Match Schedules
      • Others – Rediffmail, Thought for the day, Shayari, Health Tip, Dictionary
    • This is a key revenue generator for the company’s mobile business.
    • The product consists of schedulers, crawlers, parsers and web based CMS interfaces for updating and managing mobile content.
  • Automations: Automated most of the mobile services, which save thousands of man hours every month across multiple teams. Conceived, initiated, designed and implemented, by myself completely, these automations are among the most appreciated of my products by several vice presidents and directors of the company. Some of the automations are Gen Poll Activator, Command-Mapper, Op-Circ Service Manager, Chronological Services, Oneliners, Datewise Subscription Tips etc. These initiatives have not only enhanced the efficiency of various departments – content and product management, network operations, technology etc but also increased revenues and later it has become a popular trend in the company across several departments.
  • Rediff Bol mobile integration: Extended Rediff Bol, rediff’s instant messenger service, into mobile domain. This consists of messaging, fetching the buddy list – online, offline, blocking, unblocking buddies, viewing blocked buddy list and Logging in and out.
  • Subscription services: Co-architected the prototype of mobile Subscription Services, for most of the mobile operators in India, which are now the most popular and favorite VAS (value added services) business for all the mobile operators as well as mobile content providers across India. Built a generic web based CMS for managing the subscription services and content.
  • Text based SMS products: Designed and developed innumerable SMS products/services for Rediff Mobile under the short code 57333. Text based SMS services include news, contests, riddles, quizzes, polls, cricket scores, stocks information, jokes, astrology, health tips, Yellow Pages, Visa status, MWISH for wishing Malayalam actors, polls and info services for World Cup Football etc. Customized many of these services for leading newspapers like Gulf News, Dainik Bhaskar, Malayala Manorama, Daily Thanthi, Sanmarg and a few TV channels. Some of the other text based SMS services are mentioned below separately.
  • Smart Results Publisher: Conceptualized and designed a generic scalable platform for auto publishing exam results on mobile as well as rediff’s web search. Also, from time to time, I took care of load balancing, made quick decisions regarding planning for additional servers etc. Exam results published through this platform included results of IIM-CAT, India’s leading universities, all the major exam boards (HSC, SSC of all the states, CBSE, ICSE etc), entrance and competitive exams (like UPSC) and recruitment exams/interviews like Maharashtra Police recruitment.This resulted in quick and efficient publication of exam results on SMS and/or Web search.In addition to designing the platform, I was proactively involved in implementing and coordinating various teams (technology, web search, network operations, mobile-product management, content, web; editorial, vendors of exam results data) and taking complete responsibility for the major exams like CAT and Maharashtra Board HSC and SSC exams.
  • Festival specials (Text and premium): Developed special services (wishes, tunes, wallpapers etc) for festivals like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, New Year day, Independence Day, Diwali, Onam, Holi.
  • Financial services: Income tax computation,Loan products, ATM locator etc for HDFC, HSBC, and mobile payment gateways for companies like Paymate, all through SMS.
  • Astrology on BSNL STK, SMS & WAP and TTSL: Designed an excellent content delivery system and a web based CMS for managing the content. The CMS updates the content and synchronizes it for all the services running from a distributed network of servers.
  • Contest platform: This is a fully automated contest platform consisting of a full-fledged web based CMS, auto push system and MIS for choosing contest winners for mobile operators as well as internal content & business managers.
  • Premium SMS/GPRS products: Maintained content delivery infrastructure for premium mobile content like ringtones, wallpapers, picture messages, Java games, operator logos, animations from time to time.
  • WAP services: Developed numerous WAP services under rediff WAP site. They include most of the services covered under SMS services mentioned above. (such as news, astrology, rediffmail, cricket score card, job search and premium downloads like ring tones, picture messages, wallpapers, operator logos, Java applications, games, animations etc.)
  • Infrastructure for mobile content management: Designed many full-fledged web-based CMS interfaces for content management. One of them is cross promo manager mentioned below.
  • Cross-promo manager: Conceived, designed and developed a robust platform for creating and delivering cross promotions.  Every time a user requests an SMS service, he/she is sent a random cross-promotion from a predefined set of promos customized to the requested service, operator, circle, subject to conditions like promo validity period, max number of promos sent in a given period. All these promos can be managed and controlled thru an excellent, user-friendly web interface. This was made for Rediff’s short code (57333) services and later extended for BSNL STK.
  • Operations infrastructure: Developed many tools for tech and content operations and oversaw many operational activities like short code migration, CDR generation, pricing and billing for mobile operators etc.Also helped and provided guidance to the operations team in maintaining the mobile products from time to time.
  • Indian Railways: Architected a comprehensive railways data backbone for Train Search for Indian Railways (Railway info is one of the most sought-after information on internet in India), one of the most popular rediff products. This includes train listings, schedules, seat availability etc. Also played a key role in designing the product by guiding the product management team in providing the best end user experience.Also designed excellent railway products, as mentioned earlier, for SMS (57333), BSNL STK, DP5/DP6 and designed an optimal mechanism for cutting the content costs charged by the vendor Indian Railways.
  • Web trigger: A generic product that triggers/renders all the mobile (SMS/WAP) services (Rediff’s 57333 services) from rediff mobile web site (Click here for an example.) to a mobile handset upon a simple confirmation-reply by the mobile user. It enhances the user experience, so it has increased revenues.
  • Nokia Gallery: This application generates and delivers content through XML feeds for Nokia Ticker fetching content from rediff pages for the following services: BIZ, CRI, INT, IYCU, SPO, MOVIES, GETAHEAD, INTERVIEWS, NEWS, COLUMNS, and PERFIN.
  • News Services for Yahoo! India: Provided a content delivery platform for various categories of news for our client Yahoo! India. Later on our internal client – editorial department started using an enhanced version of this (Rediff Backyard) as their main content publishing tool.
  • Shopping vouchers: Designed an application for e-commerce team for dispatching shopping vouchers for the users of 57333 services.
  • User profiling and analytical tools for mobile services: These tools use mathematical modeling to analyze various databases for optimizing for the purpose of sending out targeted promotions in order to maximize the conversion rates and thus enhancing the revenues. Already done was providing Amazon-like suggestions like “users who bought this product also bought so and so products”. Also I proposed analytics like:
    • Clustering users into predefined categories.
    • Ranking users in a particular category.
    • User analysis for cross-relating categories.
  • Local Ads: Prototyped the mobile version of Local Ads, rediff.com’s most ambitious product ever that aims to deliver ads that serve end user’s purpose precisely and also to help the advertisers reach out the target customers precisely. This was appreciated by the CEO and the Board of Directors.

Software Consultant, STV LLC, 2002 – 2003

(Company profile: Sai Tech Ventures (STV) LLC, based in Charlotte, USA with its development office located in Mumbai was a software and web solutions company. STV LLC worked in the domains of real estate, E-commerce, multimedia etc.)

  • Provided consultancy on search engine optimization, enhancing and popularizing websites.
  • Designed a software that measures a given website’s popularity on internet.

Technical Skills

  • Programming/scripting languages: C, Perl (with CGI and CPAN), PHP, FORTRAN, Shell Scripting
  • Web technologies: HTML, WML, XML, Web Services like SOAP, WSDL, JavaScript
  • Web server: Apache
  • Databases: Oracle, MySQL
  • Version control: CVS
  • CMS, Open Source Technologies etc used: Joomla, Drupal, MediaWiki, SocialEngine, Jomsocial, elgg etc.
  • Operating Systems used: Linux/Unix, HP, Sun Solaris; M.S. Windows, Macintosh
  • Modern Information Systems: Did the course titled Modern Information Systems at I.I.T. Bombay under Padma Shri award winning computer scientist Prof. Deepak B. Phatak, founder and former head of Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, I.I.T. Bombay.

Academic/Research projects during Master’s degree

  • Characterization of GMR Thin Films: Carried out investigation of resistivity and GMR characteristics of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (Ferromagnetic) thin films. (Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) is a phenomenon, discovered in 1988, that causes drastic changes in resistivity of certain magnetic materials when a relatively low intensity magnetic field is applied. Within a decade of its path breaking discovery, GMR revolutionized storage technologies and led to the launch of IBM’s record-breaking 16.8-gigabyte hard disk drive for desktop computers in late 90’s. Discoverers of GMR were awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics). My investigations were carried out in the cryogenic to room temperature range of 20–300 Kelvin at a very high vacuum environment of the pressure ranging from 10-5 to 10-6 torr.
  • Simulation of Nuclear Charge Density Distribution: Carried out a Study of Nuclear Charge Density Variation of various elements, using the data from elastic scattering experiments to validate Born Approximation for High-Energy Electron Scattering; as Programming Lab course project. Implemented in C language.
  • Computational Methods Course Project: Solved mathematical problems using numerical methods. Done in FORTRAN.
  • Electron Beam Evaporation: Fabricated Ni – SnO2 ferromagnetic multilayers for investigation of various physical characteristics, using Electron Beam Evaporation technique under high vacuums in clean room environment.

Honors and Achievements

  • Obtained all India 2nd rank in M. Sc. mathematics entrance exam of Central University at Hyderabad.
  • Awarded first prizes in mathematics talent tests at various levels conducted by Ramanujan Mathematics Academy, Andhra Pradesh, India.
  • Mumbai Marathon: Obtained half marathon certificate for completing 21 kilometers in Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon, one of the four biggest marathons in the world.
  • Awarded a certificate for completing one kilometer in a swimming camp at IIT Bombay.
  • Won a ‘special position’ and certificates in state level Mathematics Olympiads.
  • Awarded many prizes for academic excellence at various levels of the academic career.
  • Got many prizes for essay writing and elocution in English, Hindi and Telugu.

Hobbies and Extracurricular Activities

  • Hobbies and interests: Blogging, photography, videography, film making, writing, acting, journalism, swimming, chess, reading, solving puzzles and mathematical problems, dancing, music, playing flute, hiking and trekking, Yoga, spirituality, meditation (Art of Living, Transcendental Meditation, Vipassana) passion for community service and helping the needy people.
  • Films: Played a key role in the recent short film ‘Spoorthi’; also translated its script from Telugu to English. I myself made a few mini documentaries/short films.
  • Chess: Took part in intercollegiate chess tournaments. Was captain of my college team.
  • National Service Scheme: Participated in two N.S.S. camps and did two years of service.
  • Essay Writing and Elocution: Took part at various levels. Awarded many prizes

Community Service

  • Involved in Mumbai flood relief and tsunami relief through International Association for Human Values, Geneva.
  • Involved in conducting free medical camps and 5H programs for the poor through the international NGO –Art of Living Foundation.
  • Organized Navchetana Shibir workshops to help slum people get rid of stress and enrich their lives.
  • Actively organized various workshops like advanced meditation courses and other activities of spiritual organizations such as Art of Living, Life Research Academy.
  • Sponsor activities that promote art and culture through Sharada Kala Samiti.
  • Sponsor merited but poor students, orphanages and old age homes through Adarsha Mitra Brindam that I co founded.
  • An avid activist, I sternly fight (and win!) against instances of corruption, red tape, dishonesty, unethicalness and environmental pollution etc at all the levels – right from the highest authorities to grassroots levels in e.g. politics, police, administrative and legal departments of India. (In such incidents I was usually confronted initially but later applauded! by the same people!! for example.. top officials at the office of Mumbai Police Commissioner who treated me with high honor! and remarked “India needs people like you”). Sometimes I take recourse to media to deal with the problems facing the society. I usually question the stereotypical mindsets that inertly say “It works like this only.. we should blindly accept it”!

Languages Known

Can understand, speak, read and write fluently English, Telugu and Hindi. Understand Marathi, Gujarati Bhojpuri and Kashmiri.

Strengths and Qualities

  • Inquisitive mind; lateral and out of the box thinking; creative, innovative and multi-dimensional approach to solving problems; excellent writing and documentation skills, strong mathematical aptitude, keen analytical skills, capacity to learn new things.
  • Semi expert in Vedantic Philosophy with In-depth understanding of spirituality, consciousness, mind and Yoga; and (Hindu) scriptural (shastras) knowledge.

References

  • Ajit Balakrishnan, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Rediff.com.
  • Amol Mujumdar, Director – Technology, Rediff.com.
  • Jovary Jose, Senior Account Manager – Mobile, Yahoo! India Pvt. Ltd.
  • Henna Solanki, a senior Art of Living teacher from Mumbai.

(Contact details of these people will be provided upon request.)

Philosophy &  Favorite Quotes

My core philosophy can be summed up into these quotes:

  • Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people try to adapt the world to themselves. So all the mankind progress is due to the few unreasonable people. – George Bernard Shaw
  • “Future is just an idea away”. (So is Utopia!)
  • Imagination is more powerful than knowledge – Albert Einstein
  • Joy is never tomorrow. It is always now! – His Holiness Sri Sri Ravishankar
  • Broaden your vision, Deepen your roots. – Poojya Sri Sri Ravishankarji
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