Beginning

India was once my parents’ home. It was never mine.

I grew up many thousand miles away, in New York City. That was and is my home. But after graduating from college in 2013 I grew enraptured by the adventure of India. And so three years ago to the date, I moved here.

For the past two of those three years, I’ve grown a company that applies big data to local-level weather analytics. We manufacture low-cost weather stations, and use sophisticated algorithms to combine their data with mined, public weather data. We work mainly with the central government, in analyzing extreme weather events.

I’ve been based in Gurgaon, outside of Delhi. My work has provided a platform for me to understand this country. I’ve worked with farmers for the past three years, from when I tried (and failed) to start a farm-to-table delivery business. I’ve worked with manufacturers for the past two, in making circuits and plastics. I’ve worked with senior policymakers, I’ve worked with business leaders. And I’ve lived here — and I’ve tried to meet different people while here.

I’m writing this blog to share the stories of some of those people. I am new at blogging, but I plan for my posts to fall into roughly two categories: (1) stories of manufacturing and (2) insights from the data we collect. In writing about the first, I’ll tell stories from people I’ve grown to know and work with while I’ve been manufacturing. In the second, I’ll use some of our data to contextualize other stories.

India is a beautiful, large, and diverse country. I am writing not to explain India. I am writing the stories of people.