Kailash Jain was an Ex-Pinstormer who quit Pinstorm when his family relocated to Bangalore. After having worked in a different company for a while, he has returned to us with a story to tell…

I came to Mumbai in September 2006 and joined Pinstorm: one of the fastest growing companies in India, where I worked for almost a year and half. It is here that I got to work on a lot of challenging work for the technical department. This was also the same place that gave me a 70% increment in my first ever appraisal. Having worked in other companies, I now know that Pinstorm is perhaps the only company that discusses business implications of the tools we develop in the Tech Department. We are also among the few companies that develop their own business tools internally on Open Source platforms.

In March, 2008 I had to leave Pinstorm due to my family relocating to Bangalore. Once there, I joined one of India’s leading online gaming portals as a software developer. During the induction session there, the CEO of the company was surprised to know I had quit Pinstorm.

From the time I shifted to Bangalore, I was always looking for new and challenging work, similar to what I did at Pinstorm. I planned to leave the company and was searching for other jobs in Bangalore when I realised that there is only one place I really want to be. I then spoke to colleagues in Pinstorm who agreed to have me back.

It’s great to be back in Pinstorm and I am happy to see that nothing else has changed apart from the number of people.

Here is wishing Kailash a very hearty “welcome back!!” from all of us here at Pinstorm.

The festival of lights – Diwali was celebrated across our India offices on 24th October, 2008 and in keeping with tradition, the workplace was decorated with traditional oil lamps, lanterns and rangoli – patterns made out of coloured sand.

In the Mumbai office, the day started off with teams enthusiastically decorating their corners; there was a prize to be won, after all! Everything from flower garlands to lanterns to festive lights was used and teams spared no effort in their prize winning objective to enliven the festive spirit.

The main draw of the day however was the Fashion Show, which everyone was looking forward to. The PinChicks and PinDudes were seen strutting down the ramp in all their traditional finery, even the bosses and the house-keeping guys got involved, which made the Pinstorm family event all the more exciting.

We have been on quite a recruitment spree since the last month and the new Pinstormers seized the occasion to entertain all who had assembled to dancing, mimicry and some more of the ramp walking. We must say that the current lot of new Pinstormers are quite sporty! All in all, it turned out to be a very happy day for all.

In keeping with this state of happiness, here is wishing all of you a very happy Diwali from all of us here at Pinstorm!

Images at gallery.pinstorm.com.

While in Mumbai, Guy Kawasaki graced the Pinstorm office today. Spoke about his most recent venture, his early days, and some tips among other things. According to him, “most US advertising agencies are just full of hot air”. He also said that he was “very impressed with Pinstorm’s Pay For Performance model” and that “most agencies in the US would go bankrupt if they adopted this model”. It was good to interact with you, Guy, thanks for all the fun. The Pinstormers will stay in touch!

Photos at gallery.pinstorm.com

Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm will participate in a discussion organised by IAMAI on The Conference on Digital Marketing, to be held on 9th September ‘08, at Taj Residency, Bangalore. His panel will discuss the allocation of ad spend between digital and traditional media.

You can find the itinerary for the rest of the event at http://is.gd/2lgF.

It’s been a while since this space was updated. Not that we have had nothing to say, just too much to do! What better way to kick things off again than to tell you of our recently concluded Annual Off-Site.

Unlike the last two years, we headed to Goa (hell yeah!) this year for one whole week. However, this year was special for a different reason; Pinstorm has added offices in the EU and China apart from being present in Singapore, Malaysia and the US and it was the first time that all Pinstormers were meeting in one place. You can imagine the pandemonium that ensued!

125 Pinstomers from across the world started for Goa on the 25th of August ‘08, from the Mumbai head office. We caught the Garib Rath – ‘chariot for the poor’ in Hindi- train, which turned out to be quite a misnomer as we were seated in AC sleeper compartments which also had (working) electrical sockets to power our gadgetry.

Imagine a group that large, spread over three bogies, running all over the train, laughing boisterously and generally having a good time.

The pinvasion of Goa started with the occupation of Sun City Resort near Baga beach. Once there, the group was divided into 12 teams of around eight people each, with a captain and vice-captain. An events schedule of conferences and tasks of the week was handed over to all captains.

The Pinstomers spent the remainder of the week taking part in various conferences and outdoor activities. We were privileged to have Alok Nanda – founder, Alok Nanda and Company; NP Satyamurthy – Joint President of Lintas Media Group and Sanjay Khare -Executive Creative Director of Euro RSCG, India, hold special sessions with a team task assigned at the end. Teams were then scored on the basis of how well they executed the tasks.

In the outdoor activities the teams took part in learning how to read a compass and tie different knots. The best part however was the activity where the teams had to race all over Goa, each destination providing a clue to the next, like The Amazing Race. The only difference being that the Pinstomers were left in the lurch with a bottle of water, biscuits and Rs. 20 (US$0.45!) only per person. Personal money and mobile phones were banned too! Even after two days, the company is still buzzing with the different modes of transport the teams hitched rides on to complete the race. More on this later! (yes, we’ll devote an entire post to this one Its here.)

As the minutes ticked by, the Pinstormers on the station were seen lying on the railway track able to convince the station master to delay the train at the Goa station by 12 whole minutes! This allowed us to jump off the buses and into the train just in the nick of time!

All in all, the entire week turned out to be a lifetime experience for all of us, which brings us to the next question: How soon are we having the next off-site?

Images at gallery.pinstorm.com