2004 was a special year. On September 5th of that year, Arbit Choudhury- The World's 1st MBA Comic Character (www.arbitmba.com) was born - created by me and Hemant, my MBA batchmate at the time. After "Arbit Choudhury" was an instant hit with the masses in India, we were in a peculiar quandary. Soon we would be graduating from our B-school to start our professional careers in different geographies across the globe. How would we be able to continue to create Arbit Choudhury comic strips on a regular basis, while working half way across the world? It did not take us long to figure out the answer. It was Gmail and it's associated services.
Over the last 3 years, Google has helped me, Hemant and Nikhil seamlessly co-ordinate and synchronize our activities from different parts of the world. We have continuously created and released Arbit Choudhury comic strips from 12 cities (Geneva, London, Kualalumpur, Dubai, Baltimore, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Bilaspur, Baroda, Bhopal), 6 countries (India, USA, UK, Switzerland, UAE, Malaysia) and 3 continents (Asia, Europe and North America). Archiving truckloads of fan mails on Gmail, arranging important mails through multiple labels, discussing plans on Gmail Chat, scheduling activities on Google Calender, simultaneously working on documents on Google Docs; Gmail has been the driving force that has helped the 3 of us take Arbit Choudhury to his fans over the last 3 years. The extent of our dependence on Gmail and it's related services is best summed up by Hemant, when he says, that our days begin with "Google before Gargle".
Shubham Choudhury, Cartoonist
Hyderabad, India
Labels: keeping in touch