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A multitude of roles

An ever-engaged entrepreneur— Sahil Parikh, Founder and CEO, DeskAway, wishes to run several scalable online businesses which can be accessed from anywhere and everywhere. By Nikita Upadhyay

Sahil Parikh

Born and brought up with an independent mindset, Parikh was left free to try out any career of his choice. Coming from an entrepreneurial family based in Mumbai, he did his schooling from Bombay International School and went to HR College. After two years of his college life, he flew to the US to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue his undergraduate studies. He stayed in the US from 1997 to early 2005.

In the year 2000, the dotcom tide had just started and getting a job around that time was not easy. It was during that time that Parikh had graduated. By that time he had started reading lot of books on entrepreneurship and did some Web projects to pay the rent. This was his first step towards being an entrepreneur.

The way ahead

Parikh opined that his career path was not planned and decided, but just happened to him. He went to the US with an inclination of doing his major in business, but because of the hoard of avenues in the US education system, he was allowed to try out other courses as well.

This made him take up computer programming in the second semester and he also got a job in the computer science department. This sparked his interest in computer networking and software. Ever since, he has not looked back.

Career graph

From 1997-2001, Parikh tried many permutations and combinations with his career. Some of them included working as a computer consultant, network troubleshooting for the computer science department and programming for a real estate startup. His summer internship was with a visual e-commerce startup called Merscom.

After that, his second internship was with IBM. Around 2002 he started freelancing as a Web developer and started his own Web development business called ‘Dimension Studio’ with his wife. From 2002-2005 he did programming with Clinical Tools Inc. During the same time he turned Dimension Studio into a successful Web development studio with large corporations as its clients.

“I am currently the CEO of Synage Software and heading our flagship online service, DeskAway. I am involved with a multitude of things ranging from business partnerships, online marketing, product architecture and future evangelization,” stated Parikh. He is also the founding alumni member of the Carolina Entrepreneurship Club, member of the TiE India and on the executive committee of the American Alumni Association.

Key achievements

Parikh thinks that his courage to move back to India from the US, giving up a secure job as one of his achievements. His second achievement is that he focused on building an online business when everybody else was concentrating on BPOs, offshore projects, etc. “I knew it would take long to transform DeskAway into a global online service, but it was worth the effort and capital,” stated Parikh.

“When everyone else termed India as a country of low-cost workers, it fuelled my ambition to prove them wrong and build DeskAway into a high quality global product used by thousands of small businesses around the world,” he added.

He observed that India had the potential to build great Internet products that the world can use. He opined that since service businesses were easy to start and they pay well, most people tend to forget about the long-term prospects of a product business. Parikh wants his company to be known for its high-end products rather than its low-cost services.

His dream was to pioneer Software as a Service (SaaS) in India and build a product that would provide value to thousands of businesses around the world, and most importantly, one that is conceptualized, developed and marketed from India.

Team builder

Parikh believes that a good leader has to be a good team builder as well. This is what in his opinion will keep everyone in sync and scale the company to desired altitudes. He stated that being a good team builder is a challenging task. The leader always needs to remind the team as to what they stand for, their ultimate goal and the reason behind doing things.

“My family business is finance, stock broking and wealth management. My father, Parag Parikh, is the chairman of Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services (PPFAS). My mother, Gita, is an avid golfer and is also involved with the marketing side of PPFAS. I have a younger brother, Neil, who is currently pursuing his MBA in Barcelona. My wife, Sitanshi, is a writer and is also a features editor with Verve Magazine,” stated Parikh.

Parikh is an avid golfer and a tennis player. Besides, he loves traveling to islands in distant places. He is passionate about reading novels and keeping up with the trends in the software and the Internet industry. He, along with his wife, practice yoga thrice a week and that is his fitness mantra.

nikita.upadhyay@expressindia.com