People of OST: Akshay Raje, Lead Software Engineer
Akshay is a lead front-end engineer and the in-house JavaScript expert. He has the expertise in cutting edge front-end technologies, PHP, WordPress and Google Apps. He’s enthusiastic about trading crypto-currencies and often writes about these topics on Medium and Quora.
Tell us about yourself!
I was born and brought up in Mumbai, India. I come from a non-engineering background as I studied business management and human resources management. I had a decade long career in human resources, but all this time I was quite passionate and interested in programming. I pursued this passion for many years in the form of side projects and open source contributions. I started working for people in engineering and I began my full time role in engineering when I started working for Pepo. At its core, I look at software development as a means to express my creativity. I’m turning ideas into tangible products which can reach thousands of people. This is what excites me about developing software at OST.
What does your role at OST entail?
I lead the front end engineering team. My work includes implementing user interfaces and user experiences that the product and UX teams provide. I work with all our products, including OST Platform, OST View, and OST KYC. In terms of our technology stack, I mostly work with Javascript, CSS, HTML, and Node JS. Lately we have been working with React JS. Most recently, our team has been working on building mobile apps with React Native, which is a React JS-based platform where we can also build cross platform native mobile apps. My daily tasks include reviewing and writing code, planning sprints, and making sure that the project delivery is going as planned. I also mentor our junior team members.
What do you like most about working OST?
My favorite experience at OST was the 2–3 month period during our ICO which we delivered at a very fast paced and built a very secure platform. OST is one of the leading companies working on bringing blockchain to mainstream applications. In the blockchain space, most companies are working on core blockchain products and aren’t completely dealing with mainstream apps. That’s not the case with us and this is what makes it very exciting. Being in a small team, I pretty much get to work across the stack and interact cross functionally. There are no set hierarchies, so that helps me make an impact. From the front end perspective, what excites me is that I get to work on things that make the first impression on our users and also on our potential partners.
What are you most excited about for OST?
The future of OST is in the blockchain space and trying to be a loyalty program focused company. When we’re talking about the future of OST, I see a couple of things. In terms of the product, we have matured quite a lot. Our platform has come a long way and our block explorer OST VIEW is now available. We are at a cusp where we can very positively drive our go-to-market strategy with all these offerings. We can provide plug and play solutions for our potential users. The last 18 moths has been all building, building, building. Now it is time that we take these things to our end customers.
Where do you see the future role of blockchain?
Blockchain essentially combines the best of two different worlds. It’s trustless and decentralized. Any traditional medium of exchange such as gold is essentially trustless because the value of gold is not derived centrally. Blockchain combines these benefits with being able to be digitally transferred for a very low cost. That’s essentially what differentiates it from a lot of payment and fintech developments in the recent years. Given these benefits combined with the immutability, it really is poised to disrupt a lot of industries.
In the last couple years, a lot of the regulations have been formed. I think going forward it’s going to be really interesting to watch how these technologies are fused with mainstream applications, new types of products, emerging industries, and use by the end users.
Thank you, Akshay!
Be sure to check out last week’s interview with OST software engineer Tejas Sangani. Subscribe to our YouTube channel or listen to the audio format anywhere you listen to podcasts, including iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. We’re also now available on Alexa! Simply add “OST LIVE” to your flash briefing.
About OST
OST powers the future of brand loyalty. Innovators use OST Platform to reward behaviours and increase engagement with Brand Currency. It’s a complete set of developer tools that any company can integrate without any in-house blockchain expertise. OST partners reach more than 300 million end-users and we will be rolling out live implementations throughout 2019. OST currently has offices in Berlin, New York, Hong Kong, and Pune, and is expanding to other markets. OST is backed by leading institutional equity investors including Tencent, Greycroft, Vectr Ventures and 500 Startups.
