Hello👋

I am Mandar Marathe.

I turned 42 this year.

When I was 39, I tore 2 ligaments in my left knee and had to undergo the knife. This year, I tore 3 ligaments on my right knee. Its not funny. I know. Since both my knees have popped, I consider myself retired from sport – Cricket is what I used to play actively till 2021.

I love to travel and try to fit in atleast 3 vacations a year. One trip to a wildlife sanctuary is a given. Once every 2 years, me and my family take off to an International destination. Having visited 13 countries, Japan has been my favorite so far. In India, Ladakh is magical, serene and scenic beyond words.

While in grade school, I taught myself to design & build websites in HTML. I remember to own a Pentium 386, 486, Pentium I, II and Pentium IV desktop. Ok, that makes me Internet OG.

Back in the 20’s, I took up my first job as a Software Engineer at Infosys, after graduating as Computer Science Engineer from VJTI, Mumbai [ Getting into this college is kinda of a big deal ]

After Infosys, I moved to the United States to pursue my MBA from Mays Business School, Texas A&M. Thereafter, I worked at Digitas in Boston.

I got married twice In 2009. To the same girl. And I am still married to her 😉 We have two kids, Ahan (10 year old son) & Aira (7 year old daughter) and now settled in Mumbai, India since 2011.

In 2014, I started a bootstrapped agency for startups and small businesses called Briefkase [ Brief = What you get from clients, Kase = What we make of it. Yes, I did come up with the name]. We ran it successfully with half a million ARR in 2019, before COVID hit the sealing fan and we had to slow down in 2020.

Post Briefkase, I ran a personal finance startup for millenials called Koppr.

Both my previous startups are now defunct ;(

Thanks for reading all of this. My main purpose now is to convince you to sign up for my free newsletter.

It’s unlike any other newsletter: There aren’t any ads, and I only send it every month or two when I find something amazing.

Like a great business book, an amazing wildlife sanctuary trip, or a fascinating new travel destination to share.

Sign up for it here. It’s free.