Orkut Power User – Rahul Bansal

back with an another power Orkut user. This Orkut user is really powerful, smart, brainy (might because of Horlicks) and most importantly a man with a bigger heart. How many of us would want or dare to help our competitors? But this young man is having a much bigger heart which gets ready to help anyone instantly, without any conditions. You can find many blogs online where bloggers express their gratitude to this young entrepreneur, including Gourav Dua . I am talking about a powerful brain with a soft heart, I am talking about Rahul Bansal.

Rahul Bansal belongs to Pune, India. With a masters degree in Computer science, this young man selected blogging as his profession over any handsomely paid job. He started his blogging career on Blogspot, a free hosting service provided by Google. Later he decided to be serious about this profession and moved to a self hosted wordpress blog, called Devils Workshop. Devils Workshop went popular in a very short span of time mainly because of three reasons. (1) Rahul was posting his own scripts, (2) Rahul was responding to comments actively, (3) Rahul started helping Orkut users by scraps/email also. There is only one common thing in those three reasons and that’s Rahul. Yes, Rahul made DW successful on his own.

Initially DW was a dedicated blog for Orkut related stuffs, but later he moved ahead and started updating various technology related posts. In between many bloggers joined DW and started helping it to grow. Deepak Jain (Editor), one of the right hands of Rahul helped making it more popular with his regular and quality posts. The growth of DW went so fast that Orkut related posts in DW became like the small fish in a pond. It became very difficult to pull out Orkut posts from DW’s larger database and that’s when Rahul decided to start a dedicated blog for Orkut only. OrkutDiary took it’s birth then.

Orkut Diary is a dedicated blog that deals with all Orkut related posts. One thing I like most about OD is it’s template (it simply rocks!). Although OD is not having decent number of posts today, we should not forget that it’s just the beginning and more to come yet. From DW to OD, the journey was full of success (a lots of dedication, hardwork, patience was in the background). And now Rahul started his new company rtCamp. rtCamp is a new innovative company that encourages new talents to join and work with them.

I had the pleasure and opportunity to take an e-interview of this young Indian talent. I came in touch of Rahul few months back, when I came across DW. I have even worked as a guest blogger in his blog, DW. I had to update this section by Saturday and I had decided to feature Rahul as this week’s Orkut Power User. But due to some problems I could not reach him before Friday. Finally when I came in touch of him, I was confused with two things, first is the time factor (time was very less in hand) and second is his busy schedule (if he will give priority to my e-interview). But that person was so humble and kind that he not only accepted my request but also assured me to reply back his answers within the deadline. Deadline was by Saturday night, but I was surprised to see his mail with all answered questions on Friday night itself. Thanks bro.

Here is the e-interview section :

Bapun : Hello and thanks a lot for your time.

Rahul : The pleasure is all mine buddy!

Bapun : How about a small intro?
Rahul : I am PHP programmer, blogger and recently became a full-time entrepreneur.

Bapun : So, how have you been?

Rahul : Amazing. Our company rtCamp is progressing much better than we have anticipated. This keeps my mood pretty well these days.

Bapun : Feeling nervous facing this e-interview?

Rahul : Not much. I am used to interviews from both ends.

Bapun : What are your strengths?

Rahul : Dedication, hard work and “Don’t give up!” attitude.

Bapun : Your weakness..?

Rahul : Emotions.

Bapun : Do you believe in GOD?

Rahul : Not much.

Bapun : Two things you can’t dare to miss!

Rahul : A business opportunity and good food.

Bapun : Three things you would like to give up!

Rahul : Bad eating habits (it made me overweight), unorganized daily routine (it stresses me a lot) and smoking (it reduces stamina at gym)

Bapun : Do you consider yourself smart? If yes, why?

Rahul : Yes. I believe everyone should have good attitude towards oneself.

Bapun : You are on Orkut since?

Rahul : February 2006.

Bapun : What made you to make a site on Orkut?

Rahul : It was so much fun then. I used to find lots of bugs and hacks. I was also creating lots of scripts for Orkut so I wanted a way to share my stuff with other fellas.

Bapun : Any special reasons behind buying the domain “Devils Workshop”?

Rahul : I wanted to buy my own domain that day and when I started thinking, I found I was empty-minded. Then famous praise stuck my mind “Empty mind is Devils Workshop” and I went ahead with it.

Bapun : DW was initially a Orkut tutorial site. How come it became a technology site?
Rahul : My personal focus shifted away from Orkut with time but I am still always after some technical stuff. Still we have a dedicated site for Orkut now – Orkut Diary

Bapun : Are you going to make this (blogging) your profession?

Rahul : I already took blogging as profession long time back. Now we are growing as a professional blog network.

Bapun : If you were not a webmaster today…?

Rahul : Not sure. But I would have loved to see myself as guitarist… Something like rockstar!

Bapun : Any inspiration behind your success?

Rahul : Countless nice comments and appreciation I receive from DW readers has always been my driving force. By the way I really don’t think I am successful yet. The best is yet to be…

Bapun : DW stands among TOP Indian technology blogs today. Do you feel like getting paid for all your hard works?

Rahul :† Yes. We are getting what we deserve. After all, its hard work of many people.

Bapun : Any helping hands on DW?

Rahul : Deepak Jain. He single handedly helped DW sail through crucial time.

Bapun : You are not much active now-a-days on DW as far as new postings are concerned…why?

Rahul :† My new responsibilities at rtCamp keep me busy for most of the time. I am still active and connected with blogosphere. Sometime back, I had to make a choice – either run DW on my own and become a famous blogger or spend time on working behind the scene to build a platform for new bloggers. I am happy the way things are progressing. I expect myself to post more frequently on different blogs once strong foundation work for rtBlogs gets completed.

Bapun : How rtCamp happened? (Note: Your answer need not to be case sensitive )

Rahul : I wanted to start a company since my college days. But my idea was not to start a company to be rich or to have ego satisfaction. I have closely seen corporate world and I wanted to run a company differently. The main idea was to have a company where each person will have more freedom, authority and responsibility. King Arthur’s round table used to inspire me a lot. So I wanted to start a company around “round table” ideology.

Bapun : Future plans with rtCamp?

Rahul : We are working on 3 divisions. (a) Blog Network (b) Services – we offer professional services to clients (c) Products – we believe in software as a service model and hope to make public few of our products publicly available by the end of this year.

Bapun : Do you want to advise people to get into serious blogging, making their profession?

Rahul : Yep. Blogging is matured enough that you can take it as full-time profession. But don’t do it just because someone is getting rich via blogging. Do it only if you really think you can do well in blogging for many years.

Bapun : What if someone will offer you 50 lakhs of rupees for DW?

Rahul : Selling DW is out of question. It is work of many people now.