Customised barcode software for KISAN
This was published on 16th December 2004 in ‘Artha Vishwa’ section of the daily news paper ‘Sakal’
Ashtech Digital Concepts, Ashish Annachhatre, Kisan.com, Bar Code, Barcode, Agriculture, Sakal News Paper, Marathi, Pune, India
- Published in Sakal (MARATHI)
Hard way up
This was published on Friday, 20th August 2004 in ‘IT Herald’, the IT supplement of ‘The Maharashtra Herald’ – Pune
| A BE in computers from MIT in 1997. Ashish Annachhatre, 28-year-old CEO of Internet Swami, a web-hosting and domain registration company and Ashtech Digital Concepts (ADC), a web designing and development services company, remembers his college days with the fondness one normally associates with the ‘best days of ones life’. Ashish, was in fact, awarded the ‘Computer Freak of the Class’ award in 1997. | |
Ashish Annachhatre |
Winner of the 1998 PC Quest quiz and Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), he says, “Technology and computers are my best friends. I am not a very social person and don’t have many friends.” He adds, “But I am trying to change myself. As CEO of a company, I have realised the importance of people skills and communication skills that are necessary for success.”
Annachhatre’s tryst with computers began when he was in the class XI when he saw his first computer. Completely fascinated, he became consummated by a desire to understand the machine and its prowess. A self-professed geek, he spends all his waking hours with the machine. Says he, “I read all computer related magazines and technical journals.” |
| A typical techie, he switched companies and jobs frequently before becoming an entrepreneur at the age of 24. His career began with Sun Technologies, an Indore-based company. He worked for couple of months and then switched to Indiaproperties.com after which he worked with IMC India as a consultant. During his stint with the company, he was posted in Germany. He says, “I was offered a five-year offer to stay but I refused, because I wanted to come back to start on my own.”
Starting with the incorporation of a designing company ADC in 2000, Annachhatre says, “The dotcom bust wasn’t an issue. I was working on small projects in the local market.” A year later, Annachhatre started his second company, Internet Swami. There were requests from my clients to start my own domain hosting services, as the players in the field were not up to the mark,” he says. The company has since established and even received offshoring projects. |
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- Published in The Maharashtra Herald
Speaking to the cyber swami
This was published on Friday, 20th August 2004 in ‘Pune Diary’, the supplement of ‘Mid Day’ by Mansi Kelkar
A BE Computers and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), this young man has the distinction of having pointed out errors in their services to VSNL, which led the company to rework their services.
Now having taken over his competitor, Alpha Sapience Services Private Limited (ASSPL), Ashish Annachhatre is all set to expand the services that he offers to his clients. Primarily involved in web hosting, domain name registration and corporate mailing solutions, Internet Swami will now, with the infrastructure, expertise and clients, provide total Internet solutions.
Talking about the Internet and technology in India, says Ashish, “Internet technology in India is at very nascent stage and requires to mature and grow. Also technology infracture and research and development is expensive, and hence, not very well developed. With the industry developed in USA, people find it easier to host their websites on servers that are based there.”
On the area of Internet security that is gaining prominence today says Ashish, “Today, a majority of the websites from India are hackable and security is a growing concern for people. This situation will improve over the years as the industry grows and matures.”
On the future of the industry, he said that scope for growth was tremendous, but some infrastructure requirements like faster connectivity and broadband, if catered to, would help in a speedy rate of growth.
- Published in Mid Day
VSNL server offers window to e-intruders
This PT Monitor was published on Saturday, 26th April 2003 in ‘The Times of India’ – Pune Times edition by Mr. Huned Contractor.
| How safe is the email account provided by the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited? The answer to this, as discovered by city-based software expert Ashish Annachhatre, is that it is secure only as long as you always remember to log off and do not simply close the window. “Each time that you do not log off, you are exposing yourself to a high risk of intrusion by someone who has snatched an important piece of information from the email header. This implies that not only can your email be read by anyone, but it can lead to other dangerous complications such as the ransacking of your address book, attacks by virus or using your email identity to send fake messages,” claims Annachhatre, who stumbled upon this flaw while testing the protocols of email service providers for one of his clients. | |
| Providing a demonstration of how it works, Annachhatre says that this black hole in the system is only because VSNL headers have a code that other service providers like Yahoo or Lycos do not contain. “This kind of break-in does not, however make it possible for an intruder to gain access into the internet account and use the subscriber’s hours of usage. All it does is open up a channel that leads straight into the email account of the user,” explains Annachhatre.
VSNL is unaware of this mode of hacking. “Our home page makes it very clear that all users should compulsorily log out so as to prevent any kind of misuse. This is essential to cut the transaction. Also, switching off the computer will automatically break the email transaction,” states VSNL’s general manager Shaikh Abdulrahim. Coincidentally, VSNL has sent out a mail to its more than seven lakh subscribers about the new features that it will introduce in its email facility. This will include better organisation of email by distributing them across folders of your choice, maintaining contact lists on-line, sending out automatic messages when you are on vacation and not likely to check your mail, enabling you to forward your mails to alternative email accounts and personalising the look of your account. |
TRACKING HACKERS : |
| Annachhatre, meanwhile, is quite willing to prove that all such added features will only take the risk level a step higher, claiming that this risk of an ‘open house’ can be eliminated only if VSNL can work on changing the content of the data that goes out with its header. It is now up to the software brains to devise a solution. All that the user needs to realise is that locking a door is the best way to keep out the thieves. | |
- Published in The Times of India
An eye on the future, that never blinks
Article was published on Sunday, 1st December 2002 in ‘The Times of India’, Pune edition by Mr. Huned Contractor. You can read the article on Times of India website as well
| If he had so pleased, 26-year-old Ashish Annachhatre could have easily settled in Germany in style. With a blue card, apartment and a car in tow, he could have looked forward to working on the cutting edge of computing technologies.
But instead of cashing in on his computer engineering degree, Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 certificate and job experience with IMC India, he opted for entrepreneurship. The “gamble” seems to have paid off now. Today, Ashish is gunning for big time collaborations with Indian and foreign IT companies for an innovation he has termed “website licensing”. |
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| “Just like software licensing which allows access to a specific software package,website licensing provides ready-to-use sites which are pre-designed and come with hundreds of templates to suit a client’s requirements,” informs Ashish.
But while web development and hosting is one aspect of Ashtech Digital Concepts, linking the agriculture sector to the Internet is his other important domain. Ashish’s web portal greenmatrix.com has therefore specialised in producing B2B and B2C portals, e-commerce, database integration and eCRM solutions for agriculture businesses across the globe One of his projects, kisanbazar.com, offers scope for product inquiries, trading and auctions for agricultural produce while poultrydeals. com goes to the extent of hosting hourly market updates. “As of now, the farming community may continue to look at the Internet with a degree of suspicion, but corporate players in sugar, poultry, dairy, seeds and fertilisers are slowly becoming Net-based in a big way. Over the next few years, e-commerce will have a major say in agriculture,” predicts Ashish. |
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| It is not for the first time that Ashish has gone where no one has been before on the Net. Even before Ashtech was formally launched, Ashish developed the indiaproperties. com portal and quickly moved on static sites to dynamic ones such as globalflowerdelivery. com, before setting up ‘Internet Swami’ to entice clients with offers of free websites.
“It is not enough to simply develop an ecommerce portal. To begin with, e-commerce for someone who is in the flower or gifts business can be a success story only if there is an organised back-end support. The site has to be so user-friendly and convenience-oriented that it would entice clients to use their credit cards for transactions. With e-banking facilities and RBI policies in place, e-commerce is no longer clouded by doubt and insecurity.” The dynamic one-man show launched in 2000 has now progressed to a six-member team of software pros, a marketing office in Baramati which taps the sugar sector. “We are growing at 90 per cent each year,” reveals Ashish. And it does not stop here. Absolutely loyal to Microsoft technologies, Ashish is now working on SQL servers and Dotnet which is a language-independent technology. “The important thing is to keep an eye on the future and never blink,” he states. Ashish Annachatre… making giant strides on the Net. |
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- Published in The Times of India
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