I've been in advertising, media and marketing for - gosh! - 24 years now. Started at 18. Worked at places like Ulka (now FCB), Trikaya (now Grey) and Ogilvy (still Ogilvy) in India and Hong Kong. Helped launch MTV in India.

Moved to the 'net side of things. Helped launch Yahoo! and Amazon while at a Valley firm called CKS Partners. Headed marketing at a software startup in Seattle called iCat that was later acquired by Intel. Came back to India to run MTV's rival - Channel [V] till Murdoch's Star TV came and gobbled it up in 2000.

I've since been doing a few things. One is investment-related: have helped fund 13 startups doing things that turn me on: instant messaging to education to search engine marketing to movies to real estate listings to financial software to logistics to wines and spirits marketing. They're independently run and I kinda sorta help them if they ask me to.

The second is where I spend most of my time - running one of these startups myself: Pinstorm, (do check out http://www.pinstorm.com) that does some neat stuff with search engines and marketing.

The last is the grab-all 'sundries' basket. I travel. I'm on the Board of the Bombay chapter of a non-profit called TIE: The Indus Entrepreneurs. I'm trying to bring up a most curious 8-year old. I travel and talk at various universities. And I travel some more:)

I'm trying to finish a book this year. And, yes, I've started on that movie.

Oh - and I started a VC fund in 2006 - Seedfund (www.seedfund.in)

Truly cliched interests: Travel (42 countries and counting), Reading (buy more books than I could possibly ever read) and Music (used to run a music-driven TV channel, pretty diverse set of likes)

Pink Floyd.
Dire Straits.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
The Doors.

Hmm. Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Y Tu Mama Tembien.

Don't watch too much. Will be appearing on one - an Indian rip-off of The Apprentice, playing myself - which should come on air sometime in 2006:). Am online, though.

Books? too many to mention. I'll try authors: Pico Iyer, Salman Rushdie, William Gibson, Philip K Dick, Jared Diamond (will come back and add more later!)