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Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Ethan Nicholas

Ethan Nicholas : From A Software Engineer to an Overnight Successful Game Developer

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In the programming world, which is already brimming with the tech experts and finest coders, only a few have achieved overnight success. Experience plays a vital role in the journey of a long-term accomplishment, but who knows when one can turn out to be a millionaire while just planning to earn some extra cash. Ethan Nicholas, a senior software engineer currently working at Google, developed a game with the sole purpose of earning some extra cash. But iShoot, the game he developed, turned out to be the biggest achievement of his life and brought him profit he never dreamt of.

Early Life

Nicholas started programming from the tender age of 8 and became a professional coder at the age of 16. He went to North Carolina State University and graduated in 1998. In June 1998, he joined GeoCities as a software engineer, but he shifted to Yahoo! only after a year and worked there as a lead developer. In July 2006, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked as a primary developer on the Java Kernel Project. And, while working for this company the idea of developing a game strike his mind, and he started learning objective C. Nicholas had to learn objective C so that he could start developing the game.

Development of iShoot

Ethan Nicholas
Image Source: wired.com

While he was working as a staff engineer in Sun Microsystems, he spent eight hours every day to develop iShoot. Since he didn’t know objective C and also didn’t have enough cash to afford the documentation he needed to learn it; he mastered it from various internet sources within six weeks followed by writing the code. Programming from an early age of 8, he was able to ace a whole different language very quickly.

Ethan Nicholas, in one of his interviews, mentioned that he was inspired by Steve Demeter, developer of Trism, a game that brought him overnight glory and became a connoisseur in the world of game development. In 19th October 2008, Nicholas launched iShoot, an artillery combat game which was available in Apple’s iPhone app store. The launch of iShoot changed his life dramatically by earning $37,000 in a single day.

He was still working at Sun Microsystems and decided to leave his job to work on the next version of the game. In January 2009, Nicholas left his job and founded the gaming software company, Naughty Bits, under which he launched the second version of the game. By then, he totally made up his mind to devote all his time to iPhone software development.

The Success of iShoot

Though many game and application developers release their apps on the Apple Store, the success of Ethan Nicholas was quite appreciable and unpredictable. Initially, when the app was launched in October the number of users was less than expected and to attract more of them, Nicholas created both paid and free (iShoot Lite) versions of the game. This hiked the selling of the app, and the game became ranked number 1 on the App Store, within a few months of its release.

The game also acquired the top spot on the Top Paid Apps list, witnessing minimum 10,000 downloads per day. The free app was downloaded around 2.4 million times and over 300,000 users bought the paid app. Revenue of $21,000 was confirmed for 10,000 downloads per day, which were partially the driving force for creating the second version of it. By early 2009, Nicholas had already bagged $800,000, which is a more than a decent amount.

He was pretty surprised about the success, the 6-weeks hard work brought to him. So, for the next version, he was ready to blow the minds of the users with better graphics and game strategies exposing more of his programming skills.

Apart From Being a Game Developer

While Nicholas focused on expanding Naughty Bits, he was also involved with other business tycoons to expand his influence on other fields.

In January 2010, he cofounded echoBase and served as the lead server engineer for four years. He developed software that was useful to the medical professionals to track patient’s data. He served as a software engineer at Oracle for eight months.

At present, apart from working at Google, he is developing a swift compiler in Apportable.

Duracell logo

Duracell, an American Company Leading in the Production of Finest Power System

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In a world full of premium technologies, the invention of rechargeable batteries and efficient power systems have lifted the performance of machines. But, only a few companies have achieved the advancements in the charging technology successfully. And, Duracell is one of those trusted and leading brands famous for its durable power systems. It is mainly known for the production of long-lasting alkaline batteries, specialty batteries and rechargeables.

Duracell was founded in 1924 by Samuel Ruben and Philip Mallory. The company has its headquarters in the U.S and Switzerland. Currently, the brand is under the acquisition of Berkshire Hathaway who bought the company from Procter & Gamble in November 2014.

When It All Began

During the early 1920s, Samuel Ruben was working as a scientist, who went to Philip Rogers Mallory for a special kind of equipment he needed for carrying out his experiments. Mallory, then, was a manufacturer of tungsten filament wire, under the name of P.R. Mallory Company. The company was established in Burlington, Massachusetts, U.S, and it also produced mercury batteries, which surpassed the carbon-zinc batteries used in most applications. Ruben explained his area of interest to Mallory, and both of them saw an opportunity in it, which led to their joint venture.

From Durable Cell to ‘Duracell’

During the 1960s the company started shipping its first alkaline batteries under the brand name Mallory. These batteries were also supplied to Kodak after it introduced new cameras with an in-built flash.

Duracell founder samuel ruben
Image Source: blog.ofix.com

In 1965, Mallory launched Duracell brand as one of its subsidiaries, and the batteries had the Mallory brand name imprinted on it until 1980. The products of Duracell came into high demand due to the introduction of new portable devices like walkie-talkies in the market. Soon Mallory was supplying these new Duracell batteries to companies, like Kodak, Polaroid and Agfa for using them in their various devices, including cameras and tape recorders. In 1969, Duracell products were used in Apollo 11 mission (first step on the moon by humans), and it was the first battery that successfully fueled the equipment to land on a different planetary body.

Birth of the Duracell Bunny

Duracell was the first-ever battery to advertise in television, and by 1970s, almost every household used the Duracell batteries. The black and copper colour marked the brand icon of Duracell, and the launch of Duracell Bunny in 1973, won the hearts of millions, who added a playful charm to it. The colours of the icon symbolized conductivity and better strength than commonly used zinc-carbon batteries.

Acquisitions, Growth and Expansion

After Mallory’s death in 1975, P.R Mallory came under the acquisition of Dart Industries in 1978. In 1980, the company merged with Kraft, an American grocery manufacturing corporation. In 1988, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (a global investment firm) acquired Duracell, and the next year, the company went public. Later in 1996, the company was acquired by Gillette for $7 billion. Procter & Gamble acquired Gillette, the then-parent company of Duracell for $57 billion, in 2005. This acquisition made P&G world’s biggest household goods maker pushing down Unilever to the second place.

In September 2011, Duracell came in partnership with Powermat Technologies Ltd. under the name Duracell Powermat. The company made wireless chargers for mobile phones and small electronics. P&G owned 55% of the share of this merged business and Powermat owned the other 45%.

In March 2012, Duracell along with Powermat, under P&G, formed Power Matters Alliance (PMA), a global non-profit organization developed for the leading industries with a mission to make advancements in the wireless power transferring system. Starbucks and AT&T also became board members in the same year. In 2015, PMA merged with Alliance for Wireless Power and formed AirFuel Alliance.

Ownership by Berkshire Hathaway

On 14th November 2014, Berkshire Hathaway announced that it would be acquiring Duracell in an all-stock deal which received approval from the European Commission on July 2015. The acquisition and entire transfer were completed in February 2016 with Berkshire Hathaway giving P&G back shares and P&G investing $1.8 billion in Duracell.

In September 2016, Duracell announced the shifting of its executive team to Chicago.

Success

Today, Duracell is the leading manufacturer of alkaline batteries and number one consumer’s choice when it comes to long-lasting, reliable, high quality powering devices. The company employs around 3,300 employees around the world.

The company is trying to make more progress in the areas of demand and make power systems more compatible. Duracell ensures high-quality tech and minimizes the impact on the environment at the same time. Significant investment in R&D and rigorous testing of the products makes it the most trusted company in the world of powering technology.

dodge

Dodge: Story of Classic Vintage and Disputed Success Since 1900

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The two brothers, John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge, started carving a niche in the world of automobile, since 1900. And in this journey of 119 years, Dodge has become a connoisseur of high-style vehicles. It is well known for producing high-powered cars, trucks, SUVs, vans, and minivans. The company’s headquarters is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, U.S.

Early History of Dodge Brothers

The Dodge brothers grew an interest and skill for machines from their father, who specialized in making engines for marine automobiles. Before founding Dodge, the two brothers worked at the Murphy Boiler Works, in Detroit. In 1897, they established Evans & Dodge Bicycle Company with Fred S. Evans but sold it after a couple of years.

In 1990, the two were established for manufacturing chassis components and other required parts for the automobile industries. The company started flourishing from the very beginning, due to their excellent work and two prime customers, Old Motors and Ford Motor. Initially, they had a workspace in the Boydell Building, but later a plant was built in Mark Avenue. Dodge started receiving huge contracts from Ford, and hence, the main factory was established in Hamtramck, in 1910, to sign in for even higher orders.

Dodge Brothers
Image Source: davidsiwik.net

Relationship with Ford

The once started contract with Ford, an investment of $10,000 brought the entrepreneurs $1.7 million profit and $3.8 million in dividends from their stock, in 1914. The business relationship between these two companies started becoming harsh after Ford reduced the dividends to the stockholders, and the brothers filed a suit in 1916 against the company. This lawsuit proved quite profitable to the company, as it received 10 per cent of the dividend $19 million in 1918. And later, they received a return of $32 million from their total production for Fords.

Founding Dodge Motors

In 1914, Dodge Motors was established with a capital of $5 million. In the same year, they designed their first car- Dodge Model 30/35 touring car. The two brothers already had a reputation in the U.S market for selling the best quality motor parts, and in 1916, their cars were ranked the second best in the U.S.

The company also supplied light wheeled vehicles to the U.S Army and nearly 12,800 cars and trucks were supplied during World War I.

The Unstable Acquisitions

The death of both the Dodge brothers in the year of 1920 led to the constant downfall of the company for the next few years. In 1925, from the second position in the U.S market, it shifted to the fifth place, resulting in selling the company to an investment group, Dillion, Read & Co. Frederick Haynes remained the president of the company, even after it was sold to a different owner.

In October 1925, Dodge acquired 51% interest in Graham brothers for $13 million, and later, acquired the remaining part in May 1926. The Graham brothers established Graham-Paige Company to build a new series of passenger cars, but none of this could take the company to its previous position. So, in 1928, Dodge was again sold to Chrysler Corporation, and it started building Chrysler trucks.

The Chrysler Age

Under the leadership of Chrysler, many new models were launched one modifying the other. In 1932, a new factory was built in Los Angeles, California, to build Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge, and Plymouth vehicles.

Chrysler was very inventive about war vehicles, and Dodge was already popular for its contribution in the U.S army. During World War II, the company (Dodge America) built over 400,000 trucks for the war, and Chrysler Canada built over 180,000 Dodge trucks for British and the Commonwealth militaries.

Postwar, a lot of new models came up, and again, stabilized the name of the company. The Dodge Custom 4-door sedan (1946), Coronet (1956 ), and Coronet 440 sedan (1967) were some of the bestsellers of the comoany during that period.

The oil crisis of 1973 led to a change in the design of many car models, and the number of imported cars from the company’s Japanese partner, Mitsubishi increased. An entire series of luxurious cars were introduced, like Dodge Charger, 1977 Dodge Diplomat sedan, and 1976 Dart 4-door sedan.

Chrysler introduced ‘K-Car’ in the 1980s, but it was replaced by LH, a 1990s leading vehicle, to launch some of the high-rated cars, like LH Dodge Intrepid, Chrysler Concorde and Eagle Vision.

The Modern Age

In 1998, Chrysler Corporation merged with Daimler-Benz AG, and Dodge became the new company’s low-price division.

In 2009, Fiat came in a joint venture with Chrysler under Sergio Marchionne, with the UAW, and the U.S Government to form Chrysler Group LLC. For this partnership, the U.S government-provided a loan which was repaid with interest in 2011, five years prior to the date. In 2014, both Chrysler LLC and Fiat merged to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and announced that the company will be based in London.

canon

Canon: Embracing the Story of Your Photography

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Thanks to the various social media sites, that most of the people are now able to showcase their photography talent. With this, we all have grown a craze for owing DSLRs and fancy lenses. Though there has been a professional photographer in the past, today, everyone has the liberty to flaunt their skill. It all started from primitive prototypes, and gradually, the prototypes transformed into high-quality digital cameras.

Canon is one of the camera manufacturing companies that contributed to the revolution in the world of photography. From pocket cameras to professional kits, Canon meets the demand of every aspiring photographer. Founded in the year 1937, it is one of the bestsellers of cameras around the world.

Canon is a Japan-based multinational company founded by Takeshi Mitarai, Goro Yoshida, Saburo Uchida and Takeo Maeda. It has its headquarters based in Tokyo.

Canon Headquarters Japan
Image Source: hollywoodreporter.com

Early History

When Leica Model II was introduced in the year 1932, a camera that was absolutely not affordable by the common people, it provoked Goro Yoshida to create something that everyone could pay for. He studied the model of Leica, and with the help of Saburo Uchida and Takeo Maeda, he started making affordable cameras. Eventually, in November 1933, he established Precision Optical Instrument Laboratory. However, Yoshida left it within a year.

Meanwhile, Precision Optical Instrument Laboratory faced some difficulties arranging lens and range finders for their cameras. This led the company to come to an agreement with Nikon Corporation and use Nikkor lenses for its cameras. After the agreement, the company produced its first camera under the name ‘Hansa Canon’ in 1936.

On 10th August 1937, the company was rebranded as Precision Optical Industry Co. Ltd., and the name of ‘Hansa Canon’ was changed to ‘Canon’. After this, the company released more models, resulting in the escalation of the sale of Canon cameras. The success of the company made it plan to expand its market outside Japan, which was then ruled by Leica and Contax.

Building the Basics

Canon started making its own lenses, and in 1940, the company released Japan’s first indirect X-ray camera. Canon was the name of the camera body, embedded with Serenar lenses and Precision Optical Industry Co. Ltd was producing these cameras. This created a lot of confusion among customers. And hence, in 1947 the name of the company was changed to Canon Camera Co. Ltd. Eventually, Serenar adopted the same name, Canon, in 1953. In 1951, Hiroshi Ito, an engineer who worked in Canon, created a high aperture lens that changed the entire fate of the company. With time, the company produced a wide range of lenses which helped it in producing even better cameras.

In 1958, the company launched Canonet, an easily affordable camera that went out of stock within a couple of hours. Canon also released Canon Demi- a lightweight small camera that was the best choice for personal use. These two models changed the entire market of cameras, giving a neck to neck competition to Leica. The company also launched a zoom lens for television broadcasting in the same year, followed by Reflex Zoom 8 (world’s first movie camera with a zoom lens) in 1959.

The launch of SLRs

In 1961, the company launched Canon 7, the Rangefinder camera and 50mm 1:0.95 lens. The company launched its first SLR camera (Canon Pellix) in 1965 followed by F-1, a high-end SLR camera in 1971, and the world’s first camera with an incorporated microcomputer, AE-1, in 1975.

In 1989, Canon launched EOS 1 Flagship Professional SLR and EOS RT, the world’s first AF SLR with a semi-transparent pellicle mirror. It then unveiled EOS 5, a camera with an eye-controlled AF and PowerShot 600, first digital camera, in the year 1992. The company came with the first commercial SLR lenses with internal image stabilization in 1995, and the next year, Canon launched a digital camera that could easily fit inside a pocket integrated with the Advanced Photo System.

Position of the Company Today

In 2002, Canon launched another eye candy for professional photographers, the EOS 1DS, a digital SLR camera with a plethora of high tech features.

In recent years, Canon has released EOS 6D Mark II with a full-frame sensor, dual pixel CMOS AF, and a Vari-angle touch panel. In 2018, it launched ‘Canon Club Elite’, a customer service program for the full-frame DSLR owners.

Since the very beginning of its journey, Canon’s goal has been to make excellent high-quality cameras in affordable ranges. Today, Canon has not only achieved its goal of making digital cameras available to common citizens, but it has also become one of the leading brands of professional camera kits.

unacademy

Unacademy : India’s Online Learning Platform Helping People To Move a Step Forward Towards Their Dream

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Almost all the students of our country are pressurized for signing up in coaching classes after the secondary examination. But life becomes hectic after long hours in school followed by coaching and then self-study. This is the reason why students lose interest and tend to give up. Moreover, even in coaching classes, the lectures are equivalent to long hours of speech and every doubt of students is not solved.

So here, Unacademy comes to the rescue. Unacademy brings to India an online learning platform, where you can get to watch online videos of your curriculum prepared by experienced educators. The app is not only useful for 10+2 students but also for the college students preparing for exams like CAT, GATE, UPSC, etc.

History

Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh, launched Unacademy.in, a Bangalore based start-up, in January 2016. The organisation is run by Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt Ltd. Before launching this free learning platform, Unacademy used to be an educational youtube channel, started in 2010, which now has around 15 million video views. The channel was created and run by Gaurav Munjal, and then later in 2015, the other two members joined in.

Unacademy Founders
Image Source: techcrunch.com

Munjal and Singh before launching Unacademy, worked at Flatchat which came under the acquisition of CommonFloor in 2014. Saini was one of the civil service aspirants, who cracked the examination at a very young age, but he left his job as Assistant Collector, in order to build Unacademy. At the age of 22, Saini became an IAS Officer by ranking 18th in the civil service examination 2013. He realized that among 6.5 lakhs IAS aspirants, only 1.5 lakhs were able to afford coaching classes. So, he decided to join Munjal in the platform of Unacademy and give online coaching to help the underprivileged students.

Growth and Investors

Only after a year of launching the free app, Unacademy raised a good amount of funding. In 2016, the company raised $500,000 in the seed round of funding hosted by Blume Ventures. Some of the investors who participated in this funding round were Rajan Anandan (Google India Head), Sumit Jain (Co-founder of CommonFloor), Aprameya Radhakrishna (Co-founder of Taxi4Sure), Sujeet Kumar and Phanindra Sama (Co-founder of redBus). Flipkart’s co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal and Paytm’s founder Vijay Sekhar Sharma also funded $1 million to Unacademy. By this time, Unacademy already gained more than 200,000 subscribers and 729 videos from online coaches. The videos were short (around 8-10 minutes) and crisp with a lot of visuals like graphs and images to make sure that the students don’t lose interest.

In 9th August 2017, Bhavin Turakhia, CEO and founder of Directi (an online application for business and communication) joined the board as Director. Turakhia is a huge tech entrepreneur who apart from founding Directi also founded Flock, Radix, CodeChef, Ringo, Media.net (co-founder) and Zeta (co-founder). According to the estimates of Forbes magazine in 2017, he was ranked as 95th richest person of India. He looks upon the overall business strategy of Unacademy and focuses on creating more versatile contents.

In 2017, the company raised $11.5 million in series B funding, from Sequoia India and SAIF Partners. The company announced that the funds will be invested in hiring new employees and for increasing the number of products. The company was hiring online educators on the basis of their experience and the educational background.

The three founders got featured in ‘Forbes 30 Under 30 India’ for their commendable work and progress. In July 2018, the organisation raised $21 million funds through another round of funding, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners and Nexus Venture Partners being the main investors. The company has raised a total of $38.6 million through all the funding rounds so far.

The success

With the increasing number of active students and teachers, Unacademy has become India’s largest online learning platform. There are over 2,400 lessons in Unacademy, covering topics from the various competitive exams. With more than 2 million views on the videos, Unacademy is reaching every corner of India to help the youth and empower them. Unacademy also has some top ideal educators, like Kiran Bedi, on board. More than 300,000 students have been benefited from the free app and have cracked even the toughest competitive exams of India.

postmates

Postmates : Success Story of a Company that is Modernizing the Way of Shopping Since 2011

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We have got individual mobile phone applications for online food delivery, grocery shopping, etc. But, how often do we hear about a single platform that serves all the purposes of delivering grocery to mouthwatering dishes from your favourite restaurants? Rarely. Right?

Postmates is one of those rare mobile applications that has a wide network of delivery partners that deliver products to the customers within a few hours of ordering. It is an on-demand service providing company which was launched on 1 May 2011 by three founding members, Bastian Lehmann, Sean Plaice and Sam Street. The company has its headquarters in San Francisco, California, and it serves the cities of the United States and Mexico with efficient food, grocery, and alcohol delivery services.

Before Postmates

Postmates Cofounders
Image Source: blogs.wsj.com

Before Postmates was launched, Lehmann went through many tough situations and faced failure in business. He dropped out of college to open a company of his own, and he opened his first e-commerce website in 1999. The downfall of the company was miserable, and the most significant reason for it was the launch of a product way prior to the rise in customer demand.

After the business was closed,Lehmann started living in Europe, where he met his future partners of Postmates. The team created a start-up called Curated.by, and the entire idea of what the company would do, or how will it progress, was very confusing. Lehmann realized it by himself, after returning to Silicon Valley, and in his own words it was a “stupid idea”. Curated.by was transformed to Postmates after they pitched Naval Ravikant, owner of AngelList, who told them honestly that the idea of Curated.by won’t work.

History of Postmates

Lehmann tried to create a business where the entire structure will connect the buyers, couriers and merchants. In the beginning, the road was bumpy because the network of couriers was very unstable (the courier partners backed out). After the matter was settled, the tech team delved deeper for creating the app, which initially, planned at selling furniture, electronic appliances, etc. But customers were using it for ordering food, but definitely not furniture.

Since the demand for food and grocery was observed, Postmates, eventually, shifted their idea to delivering products on the basis of daily need, and the business started rising.

The Growth

Though the company started as a part of AngelPad, the road to the first round of funding had many obstacles. AngelPad is an America-based start-up incubator that provides two 10 weeks mentorship and seed money while the companies need to present the ideas to investors at the end of the program. Finally, the company’s Series A funding was led by Founder’s Fundraising, and the company raised $5 million.

In December 2011, Postmates launched the same day delivery service, through a new iPhone app. This new scheme was for the local merchants, and the customers from San Francisco, Oakland as well as Berkley. The Global Positioning System (GPS) helped the customers to track their orders and get real-time updates.

In May 2012, Postmates released ‘Get It Now’, an application that allowed the users to order from any merchant of the city, even from the ones, who did not provide delivery services. Eight weeks before releasing the application, the company released the private beta version of the service which was tested by over 1,000 users. During this time, the network of couriers expanded making around 1,000 deliveries a day.

In March 2013, Postmates launched the ‘One Hour’ delivery service in Seattle. The service was first launched in San Francisco, and it turned out to be a huge success with the company having around 200 couriers in San Francisco, and 40 in Seattle. By this time, the company had raised over $2 million from angel investors, including Jeff Clavier, Paige Craig and Naval Ravikant.

In February 2014, Postmates raised $16 million from Series B funding led by Spark Capital. In the same year, the company announced that Nabeel Hyatt (Venture Partner at Spark Capital) and Scott Banister were joining the company’s Board of Directors. In the same year, the company completed its one-millionth deliveries and hired over 6,000 riders to ensure efficient and fast service.

In October 2015, the company announced an updated version of its API, and also, the new pricing (starting at $2.50 per pickup). Within the span of one year, the network of riders tripled from 6,000 to 18,000 and completed over 4.5 million deliveries.

In November 2017, Postmates expanded its service to Tucson, Honolulu and Mexico City (first international market). The company also came in partnership with Impossible Burgers and Shake Shack.

In January 2018, Postmates announced a partnership with Ford to conduct programs and tests on self-driving technology to take delivery to the next level. By 2018, Postmates provided services in 550 cities of United States.

In January 2019, the company raised $100 million, leading its total valuation to $1.85 billion.

The Success

From failed business to running a company with more than 800 employees, Postmates has unlocked access to every local merchant in the cities for the customers. The company has collaboration with 500,000 merchants carrying out 5 million orders a month throughout 3,500 cities.