People of OST: Ashutosh Lodhi, Senior Software Engineer

Ashutosh is a senior software engineer with 5+ years of experience in building scalable and responsive websites. He has expertise in Javascript & Frontend frameworks. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Pune University.

Tell us about yourself!

I’m currently based in Pune, I was born and brought up in Pune itself. I completed my BE in Computer Science from Pune University. Later I joined a services based company called Galactic group as a QA engineer. After that, I joined an e-commerce startup called Fab.com as a QA automation engineer. This led to a new project, Hem.com, an online e-commerce website and furniture customization tool, there I was able to seek out the opportunity to get into development, it was one of the most complex and challenging projects I’ve worked on, personally, the transition from QA automation engineer to development was a bit difficult, but with great mentors around, I was able to really pull it off. Right now I’m working with OST, but I had the opportunity to work with the same team at Hem. After Hem, I joined a tech startup called Mobikon, which is in the hospitality domain. I later joined OST in early 2018. On a personal front, my interests include playing snooker, poker, traveling to beach destinations, and in free time just hang around with my friends and family.

What excites you about blockchain?

I learned about blockchain even before joining OST. I was working with Mobikon when I heard about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as there was a lot of noise around it. I started reading about it to understand the underlying technology behind it, which is blockchain. What really excites me about blockchain is how seamlessly a centralized application can transition to be completely decentralized system. Although not every system needs to be decentralized, but there are many applications that can benefit from it. The best part about Blockchain is that it’s completely transparent and maintains the integrity of the user. As a developer, it forces you to think twice as hard because blockchain is immutable, which I personally believe helps your logical and reasoning power enhances exponentially.

What does your role as a Senior Software Engineer at OST entail?

I have been working almost on all OST products from the very start. My primary role is frontend development. At the product level, I get detailed understanding & requirements from our product manager and implement it as per the UX design. As a Senior Software Engineer I am mostly involved in architecture design of the system, finalising the data structure and data contract between frontend and backend. Finding out the best optimal and scalable solutions possible, even to consider some of the new frameworks which can best fit in for the product Like angular or react , react-native etc. I’m mostly involved in design implementation, doing peer code reviews, and helping out other team members whenever required. At OST I have never restricted myself to frontend or backend technology I work wherever needed.

What are you currently working on now that we have launched OST Platform?

I have been working on almost all the products, but there are two major projects that I am currently working on. First, I am working on the react native wallet SDK, an SDK that will help our partner companies to integrate a digital wallet in react native applications. Second, I’m working on stable coins which will give our partner companies the option to mint in their own Brand Tokens against a stable coin.

What do you look forward to this year?

I’m really very excited about 2019 because it will be very interesting to see what use cases our partner companies will bring in, what challenges they face while integrating with our system, and how successful we are able to help them achieve a successful implement. It will be a great year.

Thank you, Ashutosh!

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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.