Contact Us | About Babajob | Team & Board

Sean Blagsvedt, CEO

Prior to founding Babajob, Sean spent 9 years at Microsoft, interning in 1996 and 1997 and joining full-time in 1999 in the Office group in Redmond as a Program Manager, owning features such as Messenger integration, speech recognition and what was to later become the Vista sidebar. In 2002, Sean moved to the Windows Vista User Experience team, designing the Messenger experience in Vista and how the OS represents people. Finally, in fall 2004, Sean moved to Bangalore as the 3rd founding member of the Microsoft Research India (http://research.microsoft.com/india), heading the Program Management and Advanced Prototyping team, focusing on novel approaches to technology in emerging markets and new strategies in the mobile phone space.

Prior to his years at Microsoft, Sean also worked at the White House with the Internet Policy czar, Ira Magaziner and in Boston with the Lotus Corporation (IBM).  Sean holds dual bachelor degrees in Computer Science and Public Policy from Brown University (1998).  He's really likes having fun too.

Maya Chandrasekaran, Director of Strategic Partnerships

Maya joined Babajob in July 2010. Most recently, she was with an urban MFI, Janalakshmi Financial Services Pvt. Ltd.. At Janalakshmi Maya was involved in treasury management, fund raising activities and product development. Prior to that, Maya worked with Capvent India Private Ltd., a private equity fund of funds. Her experience also includes stints at PricewaterhouseCoopers (M&A advisory) and Infosys Technologies (Corporate Planning).

Maya has a Bachelors degree in English Literature (Grinnell College, Iowa) and a JD in Media and Management (Syracuse University, NY). She loves to travel, read and watch foodshows on TV.

Madhukar Puttappa, Director of Employer Relations

Madhukar joined Babajob in February 2011. Prior to joining Babajob, he spent 4 years in Clientlogic Services Ltd as a Team Manager dated 2003 to 2007, an BPO organization with clients like Lexmark, and NRE (National Railway Employees) and later worked for 3 years as Team Manager at SITEL INDIA Pvt Ltd with clients like AOL and Earthlink.

"I'm very passionate in building businesses, people management, understanding business needs and fulfilling them. What interests me working in Babajob is our service to the informal sector. We have much do and long way to go."

Madhukar is a graduate in Bachelor of Science from Kuvempu University.

Shashi Singh, Developer

Shashi is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal and started his career with Tesco HSC in Bangalore. At Tesco, intially he was part of the ITOF team, responsible for streamlining IT Services Management processes to suit the Tesco business and worked on projects for countries such as India, Thailand, Turkey, China, Japan, UK and US. During later part of his stint at Tesco, he moved into .NET development working on projects for India and UK. While in Tesco, he also won many awards including the Tesco Innovation Summit Award 09.

After 3 years at Tesco, he took the "leap of faith" to start Mauryan Web Solutions, a bootstrapped startup developing web products targeting consumers. As the sole full time founder of Mauryan Web, he was responsible for everything under the sun to take Catninja, Mauryan's flagship product for Indian MBA aspirants, from concept to launch. He continues to apply his lessons learned on this idea in his spare time.

He was also the brains behind swinefluindia.com, a popular informational website providing useful information on swine flu in India, which received a lot of positive coverage from the Indian press and accolades from Indians all over the world! He is passionate about ideas and their execution, technology and its impact on our lives and politics and world affairs. In his free time, he likes to listen to music, cook, chat with friends.

Aditya Dipankar, Designer

Aditya Dipankar loves dabbling with and designing applications for the web and mobile platform. He’s also a flash and flash lite developer. Infographics and Data visualization is another area that fascinates him.

After his bachelor's in fashion technology from NIFT and a splendid year long stay at pagalguy.com as a graphic & UI designer, Aditya moved to NID for post graduate studies in information & interface design, post which he got the opportunity to work briefly at Microsoft India development centre, where he got to explore and learn a lot of Mobile UI, working with the Office mobile team.

Apart from being a designer, Aditya is also a singer, self-taught guitarist and professionally trained tabla player. He’s the founder of Jamgully, a consortium of musicians that is aimed at creating collaborative music. He's also a visiting faculty for the communication design department Symbiosis institute of design.

Yuvarani Jayaprakrash, Office Manager

Yuvarani functions as data acquisition/entry personnel speaking to customers on a regular basis and inputting job information into our database. She completed her Diploma in computer Science, Tally and Busy Win (i.e. Accounting Software). Pior to this, she worked as an accountant for 4 years. She has 5 members in her family and her hobbies include "listening to melodious songs" and creative work.

Gracy Mary, Employer Relationship Executive

I have worked at Babajob for the past two years, joining in 2008 first as a Customer Care Representative and more recently, transitioned into the role of Data Acquisition Executive as part of the company's mobile campaign. Born in Yercaud, Tamil Nadu, I have spent the majority of my life in Bangalore where I live with an extended family of 6 people. My passion and interest include music, dancing and reading novels. I also paint when I have a little bit of extra time. I have completed my PUC in computer basics and before babajob, worked at HSBC Credit Cards Division for 6 months.

Vinod Kumar, Customer Support Executive

In Vinod's words:
"I was born and brought up in near the Kolar Gold Field in Karnataka.
Prior to Babajob, I have worked as a Marketing Manager in Target Express for 2 years.
It has been a long journey with Babajob.com and this is my 3rd year with the firm. I am enjoying my work and the environment is absolutely homely."

Praveena Sridharan, Employer Relations Officer

I am a Bangalorean and have completed my graduation and diploma in computers. I have been with Babajob for 7 months as an Employer Relations Officer. Babajob has a very good work environment with good colleague and management. I am passionate, result oriented, articulate, flexible and hardworking person.

Denesh Kumar, Job Seeker Relationship Executive

I joined babajob in November of 2008 as a Field Marketing and Customer Relations Executive. I work closely with job seekers in registering their details on our database and communicating job details with them. I am an M.Sc (Psychology) graduate and have previously worked as a lecturer in Mayura College of Arts and Science in Bangalore. I am originally from Madurai, Tamil Nadu where my family including my father, a retired Army officer, my mother and 2 younger sisters continue to reside. I have a passion for learning and developing my knowledge which has lead me to pursue various certificates in 3D Animation in Maya Software, Bio Chemistry and Yoga. I primarily joined babajob because there is a "social service" element to the business - helping people get better jobs. I enjoy working at babajob and appreciate the company of colleagues who come from different backgrounds. I love to do Social Work, listen to music and love animals.

Fellows

Seema Ramchandani, Technical Fellow

Seema's focus is to enable and mobilize communities through software. Currently, Seema is the Graphics and Performance PM on the Silverlight for Windows Phone in Redmond. Seema initially joined Microsoft in 2003 to design and build the Windows Presentation Foundation, and glass window manager introduced in Vista. Prior to her tenure at Microsoft, she did her Masters' research on brain-computer interfaces at Brown University.

Kenny Wolf and Lauren Lavoie, Technical Fellows

Kenny and Lauren are old friends of Sean's from Microsoft and generally amazing. They have worked tirelessly to help improve the quality of jobs sent to our job seekers. They currently travelling the world while checking-in code. We are terribly grateful to them.

Hemant Nikam, Marketing Intern

I was born and brought up in Pune. I recently completed the first year of MBA from the Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management. I have undertaken a few projects during my under graduation days. In Religare Securities I handled the project of Marketing and selling Demat accounts and also indulged in online trading to some extent. In Tata Indicom I worked as a marketer.

I love to travel, explore new places, meet new people, taste the local food wherever I travel. I grew up dreaming of becoming a politician ,so that I could bring about a change in the society but changed my mind after understanding the real picture . So ,I keep on finding ways in which I can contribute to the society .I was the President of the Rotary club of Pune ,I participated in various awareness drives and was involved in a few other social activities. I love to play cricket and volleyball. I have represented the Maharashtra cricket association for cricket and played zonal level volleyball matches. I am a jovial kind of person and I derive immense pleasure when someone is happy and I am the reason for that.

Board of Advisors

Ira Weise

Ira worked as the Managing Director of Babajob from until April 2008, when he re-located back to the United States. Prior to babajob, Ira founded a variety of companies as an experienced entrepreneur over the last 25 years. In 1983, he and a fellow law school friend started 800-Software, one of the US's first mail order software companies, and the first to offer free technical support, toll free order lines, and shipment from an existing inventory.  When it was sold to Digital Equipment 10 years later, it was one of the nation's five largest software retailers, with offices throughout the US and annual sales of $180 million. Following 800-Software, Ira was president of Software Sciences in Eugene, Oregon which created and sold software for the residential real estate industry until his retirement in 1996. Prior to starting 800 Software he taught elementary school in California and Jakarta, Indonesia, practiced law in San Jose, California, worked as an adjunct faculty member at the USF School of Law and started a real estate foreclosure company. Ira holds a JD degree from USF, a Masters in Educational Administration from California State University at San Francisco and a bachelor's degree from University of California at Santa Cruz. 

Ashwin Mahesh

Ash is the CEO of Mapunity.in, where, in his words, his job "lets him explore many ways in which technology can help meet the challenges posed by social problems, and act as an evangelist for some of those things to happen." Ashwin also co-edits the public affairs magazine, India Together, and is on the Visiting Faculty at IIM Bangalore's Centre for Public Policy.  He happens to have a PhD in climatology and once ran laser satellites over Antarctica for NASA as well.

Vibhore Goyal - Technical Advisor

Prior to Babajob.com, Vibhore worked as a developer for Microsoft Research India on a variety of projects including Virtual India (virtualindia.msresearch.in) and the MSRIndia SMS Server (www.codeplex.com/smstoolkit). Before joining MSR, he was the founding member of several other companies including ROS, which built Linux based OSs for mobile phones. Vibhore's areas of interest include Security & Networking and he holds a B. Tech. + M. Tech. in Electrical Engg. from IIT Bombay.

Vibhore is currently the CTO of cocubes.com based out of Delhi.

Alumni

Shruti Salghur, Marketing and Customer Service Manager

Shruti began as an intern at babajob in mid-2008 and has shown herself to be a wonderful manager, salesperson and overall fountain of energy for babajob. Prior to Babajob, Shruti worked at the Honey Project, a US based NGO dedicated to teaching youth business skills.

In her own words: At babajob, I served as a Customer Service/Marketing Manager in September 2009, leading a team of 10 who work as Customer Service Agents and job acquisition. My background includes a Master's degree in International Business and a Bachelor's in Environmental Studies from the US. After a 10-year residence in the US, I returned to Bangalore in Feb of 2008. In the US, I served as a project manager for a company called Honey Project, involved in entrepreneurship training and development. I was involved in the day-to-day operations in addition to developing a suitable curriculum, and creating marketing strategies. I also worked extensively in the recruiting field in the academic setting and a brief stint in the IT field. I also worked as an intern at DHL – North America headquarters- in the training and development field. At babajob, I started my career as a marketing intern, where I was tasked in finding different ways to enhance user engagement. I transitioned into a managerial role supervising a staff of nine in customer service, sales and marketing. Utilizing my recruiting background, I have introduced processes to assist the staff achieve their monthly goals and targets in addition to introducing HR initiatives – such as training and development and community involvement. My education goal is to pursue a PhD in Corporate Social Responsibility with a focus in Environmental Management. In my free time, I enjoy listening to music, exercising, traveling.

Rahul Kumar, Developer Architect

"I am a very fun loving guy from Punjab. I have around 4 years of experience in web development. I have worked with 2 another startups prior to joining babajob. One of them is CoCubes.com which is a startup by 2 IITians. I worked with CoCubes.com as a core member of a team and spent around 2 years there which were tremendous and one of the best parts of my professional career. I hold Masters degree in Computer Applications from Punjabi University, Patiala (2007). Apart from working I enjoy long drives, travelling, listening soft music and bowling."

Mercedes Pepper, Fellow

Prior to joining Babajob in July 2010, Mercedes was a fellow at the Partnership for Public Service where she conducted research, managed a Webinar and assisted workshops that advocated onboarding within the US federal government. In May 2009, Mercedes graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA, U.S.A, with a Bachelors degree in Anthropology and with a minor in Government. As an undergrad at Smith College, Mercedes sought to take courses that emphasized social development and international relations. While studying abroad in Fiji, Mercedes’ academia and career interests were fostered as she studied Multiculturalism and Social Change and interned with the Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding. After receiving her degree, Mercedes interned at the Hilgos Foundation where she polished her proficiency in communications and general and data management.

Mercedes’ zeal to travel has further instilled her passion for philanthropy. She has many other interests, but especially has a weakness for new adventures and loves to be physically active. Mercedes is a native Californian and ready for anything!

Jeena Prakash, Customer Service Representative

I am from Tamil nadu and I came here to Bangalore to study. My father is a painting contractor and my mother is a cook and I have two brothers and one sister (who also works at babajob). I have completed my BA, and extra courses like computer, typing and one year catering course etc. I have four years experience as a finance assistant, advocate Vittal rao office as a office assistant, and data entry operator,etc.  I newly married and my husband is a sales person and I live my family of three.

I have been working as a babajob.com as a sales representative from two and half years and I like to work babajob service because it is a social network and babajob does not take any fees from job seekers; it is absolutely free for jobseekers and only we only take fees from employers. In modern world no one can work for free but babajob has been doing just this! I am a helping person by nature and I thank God that I got this opportunity to do this service. This is God gifted for me and I am enjoying my current job.

Deepak Gulati, Architect

Having spent over 9 years in the IT industry, Deepak joins Babajob.com from Microsoft where he spent the last 5 years in diverse roles. He began as a Communities Specialist, where he ran the Microsoft MVP program and established user groups across India. He then moved to the Developer Evangelism group, and worked for 2 years with Independent Software Vendors to ensure a steady pipeline of products on .NET Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. He was last working at Microsoft Technology Center, helping customers architect products on WPF, Silverlight and helping them build world-ready solutions. He's interested in software localization and UX design. He also loves traveling, reading and photography.

Anoop Mathew, Director of Employer Relations

Anoop hails from Bangalore with extensive experience in the BPO and HR industries and is in charge of ensuring that employers on babajob are happy. Anoop previously worked for ARK Group Private Limited, a consulting and training firm, where he managed their consulting vertical. He started his career as a programmer at IDS private limited and then moved on to Merittrac Private Limited in their consulting team. Anoop has a bachelors in engineering from VTU in Belgaum, India. He is avid reader and likes to travel.

Rachel Blatt, Researcher Intern

Rachel Blatt is a writer and social researcher living in Bangalore. She recently graduated from Brown University in Providence, RI, U.S.A with an Anthropology honors thesis on India’s commercial surrogacy industry. Before coming to India, she was a researcher for the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women in Providence and worked to plan the 2009-10 seminar “Markets and Bodies in Transnational Perspective.” Her areas of inquiry include the overlaps of informal economies and new technologies, as well as how global flows of people and technology now involve reimagining the body and the self. Rachel reads dense ethnographies for pleasure, but she’s also into lighter reading, experimental audio, photography, and graphic design. She swears she also has a sense of humor.