Rahul Dhinakaran Interview

Questions

Are you interested in working on-site at FeF or are you interested in remote collaboration? It's not exactly "remote" consultant. I'm a consultant and I spend a lot of time onsite. It's just for the hard core design I prefer to do it here (in India) as it doesn't require me to be at a place. I will be spending time onsite.

When are you available? I think we would have to split up the schedule (once we make one). The first schedule (the time I spend at OSE) would be for studying your requirement. This can be done remote so I can start right now. The next would be to study your requirement onsite. The time should be max 3 weeks for any product. Then i do concepts which again can be done remote and can be mailed to you. I might have to visit in between fr reference, etc. This could be for a week max. Once the concept is frozen i can then move to proper design and mfg drawings which can be done remote. The actual building should take 8-10 weeks. This can either be done here or there. Hope the above is clear. I think building, testing can happen at OSE i.e onsite hence I might have to be there the whole 8 weeks.

What are you interested in getting out of this opportunity? I get the satisfaction of having worked on machines. Its something I've been doing since I was a kid hence I use the words "love" when i talk about my work. I've always believed knowledge should be open source. Can you imagine how many Indian farmers would benefit if OSE started an Indian operation? I can help you guys with that. Agriculture is struggling here and OSE could help a LOT. I can help OSE establish itself in India.

What are your three strongest skills that you bring to this position? I can design machines very well...a love for all mechanical systems which I'm sure can be put to good use by OSE. Machine design is something I'm passionate about. I love agricultural machines like tractors which you can see a lot in the Sketchea site

What are the principles you use as guidance? Honesty...i cant live with a lie even for a minute. That might sound cliched but thats how I am. This is something my dad taught me when we were really bad financially. I live by that. Machine design is my first love so I want to contribute something through that.

What are your strengths and weaknesses? I love machine design so much that if something interesting pops up I tend to lose a bit financially just for the love of designing and building that machine.

What are some of your outside interests? Motorcycling, reading automotive history, motor sports (I used to work in a motor sport company before starting on my own), reading fiction (Grisham, Puzo, Archer, Wilbur Smith, etc).

Would you be willing to volunteer your time, or would you be seeking payment? I would be seeking payment

Tell me about at least one time you failed miserably and what you did about it? I've never failed "miserably" as failure doesn't cause me misery. I've failed big in sport..I used to be a cricketer (hope you are familiar with cricket) and failed to score big for nearly 3 years...I just kept going and scored big in year 4. Its not like I want to show I'm tough or anything... its just that I ensure failure teaches me, rahter than being bogged down by it.