Pinstorm has a mix of programmers, online marketers, designers and writers with decades of international brand-handling expertise. The firm was founded in 2004 by Mahesh Murthy, a marketer and investor with over 20 years of international brand-building and startup experience.
Here are key members of the management team:
Mahesh Murthy, founder and CEO, has 20 years of marketing and communications experience – of which over 10 years are in online marketing. After dropping out of college, Mahesh sold vacuum cleaners from door to door and then found a home in advertising with Grey in India and Ogilvy in Hong Kong, where he won international notoriety and awards as a creative director on HP, Microsoft, Unilever, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV - for whom he wrote and directed a spot voted “Asia’s best commercial of the decade”. He then moved to a Silicon Valley firm, CKS Partners (later, USWeb/ CKS) as Creative Director, General Manager and eventually, Partner – where he helped create and launch the first commercial version of Yahoo in 1995 and the “Earth’s biggest bookstore” campaign for Amazon.com in 1997. After a successful NASDAQ IPO for CKS, Mahesh moved to head marketing at iCat, an e-commerce firm in Seattle, which was subsequently acquired by Intel. Mahesh then returned to India to run Channel V, a rival to MTV, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in and guide startups. Some of his investees include Geodesic, Compassbox – merged into Careerlauncher, Cypherix, Indiaproperties and Webdunia. Mahesh penned a reasonably infamous column for India’s leading business magazines, Business Today and Businessworld, and is playing the Donald Trump-equivalent role in an Indian rip-off of The Apprentice, involving entrepreneurs and business plans. While running search marketing campaigns for his favourite charity in late 2003, Mahesh believed there was need to solve some big issues around technology and business models - and set up Pinstorm with a bunch of great people to do so. His sole value-addition to the business these days is to decide what music plays in the hall around lunchtime.
Dr. V. Vinay is Chief Technology Advisor to the company. A Ph.D. in computer science with operations research as his focus and the co-inventor of the Simputer, Vinay helps direct the development of leading-edge technologies at Pinstorm. Vinay is also the Group Chief Technologist at Geodesic Information Systems - a company Mahesh co-founded and on the board of Strand Life Sciences, a genomics company. Vinay spends his free time leading the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS), a body of top researchers from universities across India. His research interests are in algorithms, computational complexity, complex systems and the art of writing ads like Neil French. Before he moved to the business side of things, Vinay was on the faculty at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for over ten years and visiting faculty at Yale and Rutgers. Prior to this, he was on the faculty at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and worked as a scientist with Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Vinay was one of the first winners of India’s top informatics prizes, the Dewang Mehta award for innovation in information technology and also took home the Sir C. V. Raman award for excellence in science and engineering. Despite all this, he still seeks advice from random passers-by on how to justify his mad-scientist hair to his wife. We suggested he take inspiration from India’s president (another mad ex-scientist, by the way and Vinay’s pal) and current wicket-keeper. She however remains unconvinced.
Ratan Kanth K is Director – Delivery. He leads multiple delivery teams, which have SEM and Branding capabilities, to provide precision marketing solutions for our clients. He is responsible for achieving clients’ objectives and profitability for each campaign. An engineer by qualification, a manager by experience, an entrepreneur by spirit and aspires to be a successful leader, by his own definition. He strongly feels that Pinstorm is the platform to accomplish these aspirations, and also provides a great synergy between his personality and the current responsibility. Before Pinstorm, in his 11 years of corporate experience, Ratan has worked in the functions of Pre-Sales and Business Development (in IT Services) and Operations & Service Delivery (in ITES). In IT services, he worked with clients in Northern America and Europe providing business solutions in the technology space of ERP, SFA, e-commerce and customized software applications. In ITES, he has managed large global delivery centers servicing customers of Apple Computers Inc., Microsoft Inc., and Gateway Computers Inc., across the globe. He has experience working with Global Standards such as CMM, COPC and BS7799 and is exposed to SOX compliances. He is a green belt in DMAIC approach for Six Sigma Methodology. He is a Mechanical Engineer from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India and a PGDM from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. Ratan is a man who strictly lives by plans and data, and believes he can prepare the best biryani in the world. We are yet to experience the latter.
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Mahesh Murthy, founder and CEO, has 20 years of marketing and communications experience – of which over 10 years are in online marketing. After dropping out of college, Mahesh sold vacuum cleaners from door to door and then found a home in advertising with Grey in India and Ogilvy in Hong Kong, where he won international notoriety and awards as a creative director on HP, Microsoft, Unilever, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV - for whom he wrote and directed a spot voted “Asia’s best commercial of the decade”. He then moved to a Silicon Valley firm, CKS Partners (later, USWeb/ CKS) as Creative Director, General Manager and eventually, Partner – where he helped create and launch the first commercial version of Yahoo in 1995 and the “Earth’s biggest bookstore” campaign for Amazon.com in 1997. After a successful NASDAQ IPO for CKS, Mahesh moved to head marketing at iCat, an e-commerce firm in Seattle, which was subsequently acquired by Intel. Mahesh then returned to India to run Channel V, a rival to MTV, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in and guide startups. Some of his investees include 
Dr. V. Vinay is Chief Technology Advisor to the company. A Ph.D. in computer science with operations research as his focus and the co-inventor of the Simputer, Vinay helps direct the development of leading-edge technologies at Pinstorm. Vinay is also the Group Chief Technologist at Geodesic Information Systems - a company Mahesh co-founded and on the board of Strand Life Sciences, a genomics company. Vinay spends his free time leading the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS), a body of top researchers from universities across India. His research interests are in algorithms, computational complexity, complex systems and the art of writing ads like Neil French. Before he moved to the business side of things, Vinay was on the faculty at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for over ten years and visiting faculty at Yale and Rutgers. Prior to this, he was on the faculty at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and worked as a scientist with Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Vinay was one of the first winners of India’s top informatics prizes, the Dewang Mehta award for innovation in information technology and also took home the Sir C. V. Raman award for excellence in science and engineering. Despite all this, he still seeks advice from random passers-by on how to justify his mad-scientist hair to his wife. We suggested he take inspiration from India’s president (another mad ex-scientist, by the way and Vinay’s pal) and current wicket-keeper. She however remains unconvinced.
Ratan Kanth K is Director – Delivery. He leads multiple delivery teams, which have SEM and Branding capabilities, to provide precision marketing solutions for our clients. He is responsible for achieving clients’ objectives and profitability for each campaign. An engineer by qualification, a manager by experience, an entrepreneur by spirit and aspires to be a successful leader, by his own definition. He strongly feels that Pinstorm is the platform to accomplish these aspirations, and also provides a great synergy between his personality and the current responsibility. Before Pinstorm, in his 11 years of corporate experience, Ratan has worked in the functions of Pre-Sales and Business Development (in IT Services) and Operations & Service Delivery (in ITES). In IT services, he worked with clients in Northern America and Europe providing business solutions in the technology space of ERP, SFA, e-commerce and customized software applications. In ITES, he has managed large global delivery centers servicing customers of Apple Computers Inc., Microsoft Inc., and Gateway Computers Inc., across the globe. He has experience working with Global Standards such as CMM, COPC and BS7799 and is exposed to SOX compliances. He is a green belt in DMAIC approach for Six Sigma Methodology. He is a Mechanical Engineer from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India and a PGDM from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. Ratan is a man who strictly lives by plans and data, and believes he can prepare the best biryani in the world. We are yet to experience the latter.