bhubaneswar coming from a modest economic background in cuttack to getting a job in microsoft was a dream come true for ronak samantaray in search of what next samantaray quit the high paying job in three years to chart a path of his own and cofounded nowfloats a startup aiming to make the internet relevant for small businesses who dont have easy access to the internet or even a computer within three years the hyderabadheadquartered company boasts of 160000 retailers as its paid customers we plan to scale up our operation by at least 10 times in the next one to two years said samantaray who was in the city to recruit fresh graduates from college of engineering and technology cet bhubaneswar his alma mater he also delivered talks at iit and ximb we noticed that many small businesses dont have online presence those who have websites dont update new offers regularly we offer them a solution to update their information simply by sending an sms or a message through the nowfloats boost app making them relevant in internet search results he said nowfloats employs 250 people mostly tech graduates and has presence in around 15 indian cities ronak grew up in different parts of the state such as cuttack keonjhar and rourkela besides jharkhand because of his banker father dhirendra kumars transferrable job my tryst with computer started when i was in class v i fell in love with computer ever since said the computer whiz kid who later graduated in computer science from cet i got a ob with microsoft through campus placement in 2008 and a promotion within a year of my service it was a dream come true but since the dream was realised i was in search of what next said the coder ronak left microsoft in 2011 to do something on his own and formed nowfloats a year later in 2012 ronak feels just because there is buzz around startups one should not jump to start a venture unless one feels strongly about doing something instead they can join other startups and be part of it a major challenge for startups in the country are the complex tax laws startups dont have money and time but the complex laws force them to hire financial experts to understand and comply it this must simplify if government wants startups to prosper he said apart from being an entrepreneur ronak is also an inventor he has coinvented bolt which he claims is the worlds first smart mobilephone charger for bikes apart from charging phones the bolt riders app tracks ones riding experience using google map many bikers clubs are buying our product he said during his microsoft days ronak invented speech glove a handheld device that interprets gestures of hands of deaf and dumb into speech i have got it patented however i could never launch it in the market because i overthought about it pondering over whether it would be commercially successful he said