The Drupal Start :
I started my career with Mindtree as Programmer Analyst(Java) in Jan 2009 and started exploring Drupal right around the same time for a personal projects I was working on. My cousin and I were comparing Joomla and Drupal. Based on some basic research I decided to spend more time on Drupal. It's been five years since then. I have my share fair of complaints about Drupal but I have never regretted the shift from Java to Drupal.
Background :
One of the reasons I made a switch to Drupal was because at any point in my life I could start a venture of my own with technology backing from Drupal. In fact that became a reality very soon after moving to Drupal. I started a custom merchandise venture that specializes in kannada T-shirts. http://aziteez.com/ as you must have already guessed was built on Drupal and I was able to start what I call as a zero investment venture. We have been around for 3 years now and have a loyal customer base of around 20,0000.
The Day of DrupalCamp :
Fast Forward to Feb7-Feb8, Drupal Camp Mumbai. (For those of you who don't know, Drupal Camps are a good platform to meet like minded people who work on Drupal and are enabling various businesses, startup and NGOs.) Chakri and I facilitated a workshop on first day about Headless Drupal and the next day was all for hackathons and code-sprints.
The Surprise :
Imagine my surprise when I spotted a guy(Mr X) who was wearing a hoodie that was made by Aziteez. I walked up to him and introduced myself as the co-founder of Aziteez and was curious to hear out his story. The particular hoodie that he was wearing had an interesting story in itself. Pawan Kumar is a well known name today in Kannada Film Industry and we had had partnered with him for his next venture C10H14N2 . The Hoodie that our Mr.X was wearing was done for the promotion of the same movie.
The story of Mr.X :
Mr.X went on to say that he was from IIT Bombay and he was interested in Drupal. I was glad to know that many of his friends(kannadigas) had purchased Tshirts online from Aziteez and they were happy with the quality and designs of kannada T-shirts we have come up with. He went on to tell me that they had all liked the movie Lucia and wanted to do their bit to promote Pawan Kumar's next venture and hence they had purchased the Hoodies from Aziteez.
Search for Mr.X :
It was a memorable experience for me as it was a coming together of all the things that I love or care about. Just to make sure that I can recount on this experience in future I made sure that I had a snap with him. I am bad with names and I was sure that I couldn't count on my memory. As it goes, I forgot his name and am trying to locate him :) Please tag him or leave a comment if you our Mr.X
