Oh! that’s me

Sunish Issac, born on Jan 2nd, is an Engineer by studies, a businessman by circumstance and a tinkerer by nature.

After submitting projects at  http://onebillionminds.com I thought I’ll  have another biography related to OBM(One Billion Minds). I’m supposed to write a biography, but if my understanding is right, biography is written by somebody else and autobiography is writen by yourself. Anyways, here it is ..

I don’t like bragging and I don’t think I have accomplished anything to brag about, but sometimes you are forced to let others know what you did to prove what you can do.. Anyway here’s the story so far..

I started assembling circuits at the age of 12 and was interested in scientific experiments at an even younger age. We were a team of 5 who usually won any science fair we participated.(I’m still in touch with all of them) Got my first circuit published in Asia’ s most popular electronics magazine at the age of 16. Well, the interesting part is that,the particular circuit (auto power off for motor pumps with DOL starter) is up and running at my house since 1992 without failure. The design is unique in its own way, costs less and very sturdy as it uses an extremely simple circuit.

Participated in Techkriti 95 at IIT Kanpur and also won the first prize in Endeavour section in Techkriti 98 fro my engineering project PC based feature Phone.I also won the first place for my project [APO and shutdown for windows 95](Do you reemember that windows 95 did not actually turn off the computers) in a national level contest held at NIT, Surathkal.

After engineering, I took MCSE (was big deal at that point of time) and went to middle east to work for Telematics.  I was involved in various projects of the company in telecom, networking and software fields. I also did research on VOIP (in1999) and did some software development. I realized that there’s a need for a good telephone call accounting software and co founded Esquire Software Solutions, in UAE. We developed and sold hardware and software products related to Telephone Call Management/Accounting, Building management Systems, Access Control,SMS/FAX gateways,and lighting. Within a short span of time we had around 100 clients in the UAE including multinationals like HSBC and Nissan.

However after the sudden demise of my father in 2004 I had to return to India to take care of our family business of movie theatre and coconut oil mill. I had no clue of the business process and there was also a big bank and other personal debts. However with God’s grace I was able to pay back most debts.I modernized the theatre with DTS sound system and that helped in increasing the collection figures. I also developed software for the mill and theatre to get a feel of the accounting process. It’s being used by people who never had any education beyond school. I was also able to handle labour problems, deal with union leaders, deal with local government bodies to get things done.

Currently I’m  multitasking a lot between the family business of coconut oil mill & movie theatre, consulting at my friend’s tech company and developing personal projects. I still develop hardware and software for automating processes in the oil mill and theatre. I’m also the only developer of jaledit, an IDE for developing in Just Another Language(JAL).Jaledit started off as a hobby for me since 2001 when I started programming in JAL. JAL is the only completely free and open source PIC micro controller compiler. Jaledit is being used world over with the majority of users in Europe. Its also being used in various universities and distributed along with JAL books. Dataone Quick usage Finder is another of my free and open source project that helps BSNL broadband users to easily calculate the usage cost and do scheduling for night unlimited plans.

My current intend is to start a firm to commercialize my ventures and develop products that saves time, reduce power usage  and are epitomes of usability.

Main interest areas: Product development involving both hardware and software, usability, strongly believes that usability is one of the key factors in increasing technology spread, opens source hardware, digital cinema.