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<keyword id="6354742" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword> just launched a programme for their employees called ‘Budding Star Program which will provide financial assistance to employees who wish to participate in any national or international challenge pertaining to any field of interest. <br /><br /> Flipkart employees who have completed six months with the company will be eligible for this program, and shortlisted candidates can receive up to Rs. 3 lakhs in assistance. 

    

    

    

    

    

    

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 <strong>The application process<br /></strong><br /> The employees need to submit a request explaining their pursuit and why they need the assistance. Post submission of the request, an internal Flipkart panel will evaluate the application and confirm back within 7 working days after which, the financial assistance will be paid out within 5 working days. <br />

    

    

    

    

    

    

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 The programme will cover all national and international level sports or non-sports competitions recognized by government authorities, such as, Indian Idol, Master Chef, etc. The programme will not support regional or state level competitions and even, leisure or tourist activities<br /><br /> Flipkart has previously ranked No.1 for two years in <keyword id="28120" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="LinkedIn">LinkedIn</keyword> Top Companies to Work and is known for great insurance benefits, work-life balance benefit supports, parental support, wellness programmes, mobility benefits, retirement benefits etc. addressing all facets of employee growth and development. <div type="embedgroup"> <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="59900970" title="A Paytm customer buys gold online everyday for Rs. 11 adding to the company’s gold streak" rank="1.0" kind="RELATED" publishDate="Aug 03, 2017, 6:45 PM" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div></div>














<br /> Satheesh K V, Director-Total Rewards, Flipkart told Business Insider that this is a way of making sure that the employees are living a quality life which translates into them creating quality for the company, “The company has many multi-talented employees who have been excelling in national and international competitions such as football, archery, ironman triathlon and mountaineering among others. We are confident that this initiative will help the Flipsters cross off the most important dreams of their bucket list and in turn make us proud."<br />

Flipkart is out with yet another offer but this time around it's exclusively for its employees

Mumbai, Jul 4 () The Reliance Foundation Young Champs (RFYC) academy has been conferred two-star academy status by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). <p> The recognition was confirmed by AFC general secretary Dato' Windsor John in a communication to the All India Football Federation (AIFF) on Friday. </p><p> RFYC became the first youth academy in India to be granted a five-star rating by the AIFF Academy Accreditation process in June, 2019. The other academy that got the two-star rating is Bengaluru FC's Youth Development programme. </p><p> Assessments are made on the basis of the academy's ability to provide leadership, planning, organisation, staffing, recruitment, finance, facilities, coaching, player health, coaching and fitness among other requirements. </p><p> "To be granted Two-Star Academy status is indeed a proud moment for all of us at RFYC," said Nita Ambani, Reliance Foundation chairperson. </p><p> "Our goal is to unlock the huge potential of Indian football. I firmly believe in order to accomplish that, we need to create a world class eco-system that helps funnel the talent pool that exists across the country. </p><p> "This recognition by AFC will only strengthen our resolve to continue to strive towards excellence and ensure RFYC plays its part in putting Indian football on the global map. I thank AFC and AIFF for the honour." </p><p> Since the inception of its journey in May 2015, RFYC has made rapid strides towards achieving its vision of creating not only the nation's next generation of football stars but also future role models and leaders. </p><p> Over the last five years, RFYC has emerged as not only the most well-equipped residential academy in the country but also as a nursery for budding talents scouted from across India. </p><p> The rapid strides made were visible at the PL-ISL Next Generation Mumbai Cup earlier this year when the RFYC U-15 side defeated Manchester United U-14 1-0 to clinch third place, after having beaten Southampton U-14 3-0 earlier in the tournament. </p><p> In another notable development, the AIFF's application for full membership of the AFC Elite Youth Scheme has also been approved. </p> The scheme is a key step in talent development, designed to help Member Associations to further develop their youth programmes. AH KHS AH KHS KHS

Reliance Foundation Young Champs conferred two-star academy status by AFC

<br /> Adjusting her binocular for a better view of the snow capped peaks around, <keyword id="6498265" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Pushpa">Pushpa</keyword> kept walking in traditional salwar kameez and sports shoes. What makes her different from other women in the little <keyword id="4253959" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="kumoani">Kumoani</keyword> village is her keenness to hike and make an alternative livelihood. Just like her, there are a lot of women, who don’t mind cooking food and doing household chores but has an urge to do something else. While some love clicking photographs, some women are hiking guides.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms">ALSO READ: Traveling the world and yet earning money: Read the fascinating story of this Indian blogger</a><br />
<br /> And this exploration to find an alternative livelihood for the rural women of the <keyword id="52569" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="himalayas">Himalayas</keyword> has been powered by Voices Of Munsiari, India’s first community-run <keyword id="819905" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Instagram">Instagram</keyword> account. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms">The epicentre of this spirit </a>is <keyword id="2852036" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sarmoli">Sarmoli</keyword>, a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms">picturesque mountain village</a> in the <keyword id="1705628" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Munsiyari">Munsiyari</keyword> district of <keyword id="44522" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Uttarakhand">Uttarakhand</keyword>.<br />
<br /> <keyword id="1672234" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Shivya">Shivya</keyword> Nath, the renowned travel blogger in India, who runs the-shooting-star.com, has teamed up with <keyword id="4253958" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="malika-virdi">Malika Virdi</keyword>, an avid mountaineer who has set up Sarmoli village homestays.<br />
<br />
<strong>What do they do?</strong><br />
Sarmoli organizes their annual summer ritual in April every spring. The week-long <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms">Himal Kalasutra</a> festival where the locals of Sarmoli come together to run a marathon with an altitude gain of 8000 feet over 20km and watch birds. Last year, a week of meditative yoga and an introductory digital workshop by <keyword id="71187" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wikipedia">Wikipedia</keyword> was also organized.<br />
<br /> With the help of Shivya and <keyword id="27385" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="malika">Malika</keyword>, the villagers have started an <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms">Instagram profile</a> to share with the world their stories. Initially, it was thought that the interest in sharing their stories may die down soon. On the contrary, their interest kept surging and some villagers became too tech savvy within short period of time.<br />
<br />
<strong>What now?</strong><br />
Shivya and Malika are now aiming to crowdsource smartphones with good quality cameras, so more locals can get on board the channel.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Following a photography workshop in the village this April, we hope to do a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms">photo/Instagram exhibition</a>, showcasing the work of budding local photographers to potentially create an alternate income stream to fund a new outdoor education programme,” Shivya told <keyword id="824043" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Business-Insider">Business Insider</keyword>.<br />
<br />
“If you, or anyone you know is a<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/heres-the-thrilling-story-of-the-indian-blogger-who-left-her-corporate-job-to-travel-the-world/articleshow/56645448.cms"> smartphone photographer</a> who’d like to spend a week in this gorgeous part of the mountains, sharing their art and skills with some budding local photographers, let me know too,” added Shivya.

This is India’s first community-run Instagram
account. Here’s how it is helping rural Kumaoni women seek alternative
livelihood

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Getty/Chris Jackson" title_caption="Kate Middleton attended the awards with her husband, the Duke of Cambridge and president of Bafta." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5a8a96b6d0307231008b469a-960/kate bafta s.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/919978382">Getty/Chris Jackson</a></span></p><p class="caption">Kate Middleton attended the awards with her husband, the Duke of Cambridge and president of Bafta.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the British Academy Film Awards (Baftas) at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday.</strong></li><li><strong>The awards night had an unofficial black dress code in support of the Time's Up campaign in the wake of Hollywood's sexual harassment scandal.</strong></li><li><strong>Kate Middleton was one of few women not to observe the dress code - but it could be because the royal family is meant to be politically neutral.</strong></li></ul><p><br />The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined some of the world's biggest stars on the red carpet at the British Academy Film Awards (Baftas) at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday Night.</p><p>But while most guests adhered to the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/18/duchess-cambridge-wears-green-black-sash-nod-times-movement/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">"unofficial black dress code"</a> in support of the Time's Up campaign against sexual harassment - Kate Middleton was one of the few women who did not.</p><p>Instead, she opted for a dark green dress by Brit designer Jenny Packham with a black velvet ribbon, which some observers suggested was a subtle nod of support to the cause.</p><p>There could be a good reason why Middleton didn't wear a full black ball gown. The royal family is meant to be studiously politically neutral, so by choosing not to observe the Time's Up dress code, she kept her views to herself.</p><p>Prince William did, however, comment on the role Bafta had played in the fight against sexual harassment in his foreword for the awards' programme.</p><p>"Levelling the playing field and ensuring a safe, professional working environment for aspiring actors, filmmakers and craft practitioners - regardless of their background and circumstances - is vital to ensure film remains accessible and exciting for all," he wrote, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/18/duchess-cambridge-wears-green-black-sash-nod-times-movement/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to The Daily Telegraph.</a></p><p>"As president, I am proud of the leadership Bafta have shown on this; in a year which rocked the industry as many brave people spoke up about bullying, harassment and abuse despite the risk to their professional careers and reputations."</p><p><strong>Kate Middleton arrived with her husband, the Duke of Cambridge and president of Bafta - neither of whom wore the Time's Up lapel pin.</strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/919997102">Getty/Chris Jackson</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong> The Duchess, who is due to give birth in April, accessorised her look with a matching diamond and emerald necklace, earrings and bracelet set, and a black velvet clutch. </strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/919978668">Getty/Chris Jackson</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>Some observers suggested the black velvet sash was a subtle nod of solidarity to the movement and its causes.</strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/920021992">Getty/Chris Jackson</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bud-light-dilly-dilly-viral-commercial-super-bowl-campaign-2017-12">What 'Dilly Dilly' means - and how Bud Light came up with its viral campaign</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

There is a good reason why Kate Middleton didn't wear black to the Baftas

<p dir="ltr"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">At only 27-years-old, Tracy Chao, has established herself as one of the top engineers in Silicon Valley.</span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Chao "can now do with a line of code what a master brain surgeon can do with a rongeur," Nathan Heller writes in </span><a href="http://www.vogue.com/4537369/pinterest-tracy-chou-silicon-valley/">Vogue</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But her fate as a star programmer was not sealed from the beginning. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Despite growing up in Silicon Valley as the child of two programmers and spending long afternoons at her parents' startup, she briefly considered a career in marketing.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But when Facebook called her in for a software-engineering internship in college, her natural talent and mastery of the skills that she had learned as a computer science major at Stanford kick-started her career in engineering.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">She went on to intern at Google with some of the most elite programming staff in the country, for before ultimately joining Quora, as an early hire and joining Pinterest in 2011.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2012 she was named one of the most <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/25-powerful-women-engineers-2012-8">25 Powerful Women Engineers In Tech</a>. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>One thing she noticed during her rapid climb to the top however, was how few women she encountered.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>She knew the tech industry was male dominated, but she was too focused on her budding career to attempt to tackle the problem head on.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>That all changed last year when she attended the Grace Hopper Celebration, an annual conference dedicated to fostering the work of women in computing.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"The general sense I was getting was 'There aren't enough women; the numbers are really bad,'" she says. "But where was the proof?"<br /></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>She decided to put her unparalleled programming talent to use solving the problem with a data oriented approach. She knew that gathering hard numbers on the issue would force companies and hiring managers to acknowledge the problem.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>So she wrote a blog post calling on tech companies across the country to release their diversity data.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span> The results were not encouraging. Less than 9% of Mozilla's engineers were women, and Facebook and Yahoo employed only 15%. Certain companies couldn't even count one woman on their engineering team.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The results astounded the industry and she gained immediate fame for calling corporations out on their lack of female engineering staff and holding tech companies accountable for their abysmal lack of female engineers. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"I knew of her before I knew her," a female programmer tells Vogue. Girls swarmed to take photos of her at last year's the Grace Hopper conference.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Since her initial call, waves of tech companies have begun making internal diversity data public and it seems to have elicited direct change. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In just the past year, Pinterest's female engineering staff has grown from </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">12 percent to 17 percent. It's a small step, but one in the right direction. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.vogue.com/4537369/pinterest-tracy-chou-silicon-valley/">You can read the entire profile of Chao in Vogue.</a></p>

Meet The Female Pinterest Engineer Smashing Silicon Valley's Glass Ceiling

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Discovery Land Company</span></p><p class="caption">Mike Meldman.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Mike Meldman is the third partner in George Clooney's billion-dollar Casamigos tequila.</li><li>He also happens to be a real estate tycoon as owner of Discovery Land Company.</li><li>Discovery owns 23 properties that cater to "CEOs, presidents, and athletes."</li><li>To become a member of one of the resorts, people have to buy land on the property and build a home.</li><li>They boast golf courses, restaurants, bars, and other sports.</li></ul><p>George Clooney and multimillionaire Rande Gerber shook up the drinks industry in June 2017 when they <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-clooney-tequila-brand-casamigos-started-by-accident-2017-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sold their tequila company, Casamigos, to Diageo for a whopping $1 billion.</a></p><p>However, the pair actually have a third business partner - real estate tycoon Mike Meldman, who everyone we've asked seems to call "one of the most well-connected people I know."</p><p>Meldman's road to success has been an impressive one.</p><p>Born in Milwaukee, he told Business Insider that he went to Stanford as a history major with dreams of being a lawyer but "bombed the LSATs" and didn't apply.</p><p>"I ended up dealing blackjack in Harrah's Lake Tahoe Hotel and Casino," he told BI - though that didn't last long.</p><p>"I met a guy who asked me if I wanted to make as much money as I wanted to and work as little as I wanted to, and he hired me [to] his startup commercial real estate company," he said.</p><p>He started as a broker selling land and leasing properties in Freemont, California, across the bridge from Palo Alto, where Stanford is.</p><p>"I had no training, but I went out and learned how to make deals," he said, adding that within a year and a half he went from a broker working weekends to make money to "selling all of Freemont."</p><p>He started taking the money he earned and buying properties to develop himself, which he said had its "ups and downs" in the 80s.</p><p>"I bought a ranch outside of Palo Alto with 300 acres and [space] for 35 houses which had every environmental constraint known to man," he said. "It took me 18 years to get 28 lots on the property, [but it] taught me how to develop property through the environment and not kill the vegetation."</p><p><em><strong>See more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-life-of-cindy-crawfords-husband-rande-gerber-2017-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The incredible life of multimillionaire Rande Gerber: George Clooney's business partner, Cindy Crawford's husband, and father to 2 budding supermodels</a></em></p><p>And the experience has certainly paid off now.</p><p>"I say I got a PhD in property development," he said. "I was able to take that education and experience and move that to other places around the country."</p><h2>'Everything taken care of in a casual way'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Discovery Land Company</span></p><p class="caption">The golf course at Silo Ridge Field Club.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Meldman officially founded <a href="https://discoverylandco.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Discovery Land Company</a> in 1994.</p><p>His first big project was in Pinnacle Peak, Scottsdale, Arizona, where he set out to develop a "massive resort" and ended up with 250 homes.</p><p>His next project was also centred around golf, but by the time he set up his third resort in Whitefish Montana, he had two kids, aged six and eight at the time, who were living a city life in San Francisco.</p><p>"I figured the golf would sell to the men, but I wanted to do something that the wife and kids would enjoy," he said.</p><p>So he started the "Outdoor Pursuits" programme, which allows members to hire local people to teach them things like paddle boarding or take them swimming with sharks. "I wanted to teach [my kids] things I never learned, [like] flyfishing, wakeboarding," he said. </p><p>His kids also acted as "guinea pigs" for his next project in Hawaii, where he incorporated surfing and swimming.</p><p>"[We] turned it into a way of life, not only for me and my kids but for other families," he said.</p><p>Step-by-step, Discovery "exploded" and became 23 real estate projects.</p><p>Now, CEOs, presidents, and athletes are among those who own property, according to Meldman, who <a href="https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/developer-mike-meldman-is-real-estate-s-party-boy-18327" target="_blank" rel="noopener">once called the resorts "frat houses for families."</a></p><p>To become a member of the Discovery resorts, people have to buy land on the property and build a home, which Meldman says "creates a trust and community where you know your neighbour."</p><p>The community is private and low-key, providing somewhere that successful people can go and "have everything taken care of in a casual way," from playing sports in the morning to eating and drinking in the afternoon and evening.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Jeff Lipsky</span></p><p class="caption">Ridge House at Silo Ridge.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The resorts are designed to "take the stress out of vacation planning."</p><p>Even the "comfort stations" are "styled like the inside of an editor's closet," according to Meldman.</p><p><strong>Here's the outside of one at Silo Ridge Field Club, a private, gated, 800-acre resort 90 minutes from Manhattan which was the first to open on the east coast. </strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Discovery Land Company</span></p><p class="caption">A comfort station at Silo Ridge.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>Inside the comfort stations, Meldman says you'll find everything from frozen margaritas to ice cream sundaes and hot dogs.</strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Jeff Lipsky</span></p><p class="caption">Inside a Comfort Station.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>There are also outdoor bars like this, as well as pools and a hot tub.</strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Jeff Lipsky</span></p><p class="caption">Silo Ridge.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>Good food is a focus throughout at properties like Silo Ridge, which has a vegetable garden and an executive chef serving up five-star farm-to-table or dock-to-table cuisine "styled beautifully but still casual" - as well as kids' menus.</strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Jeff Lipsky</span></p><p class="caption">A chef at Silo Ridge.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Still, Meldman claims the resorts - and the golf clubs - are super casual.</p><p>"People now go to the Bahamas and even professional golfers play in bathing suits and no shirt," he said.</p><p>"A golf club can be very intimidating, but because I wasn't a golfer from a country snob background, I made it a little more casual."</p><p>Despite the fact the company claims to have some of the best golf courses in the world, there are "no rules - you don't have to wear a collared shirt, you can golf barefoot, it's fun.</p><p>"You're not sitting at a pool like you are at a Four Seasons with people snapping videos with their phones, you're comfortable being yourself." </p><h2>'George was always entertaining'</h2><p>It was thanks to this friendly, chilled atmosphere that Meldman met Clooney and Gerber - and with them embarked on the Casamigos journey, now his side project.</p><p>"George has a pretty tight-knit group of guys, and every year they go on his birthday golf trip," Meldman said. "A long time ago, they started going to my projects, and I ended up hanging out with them and we all became friends."</p><p>"They built their houses in my project in El Dorado... Their houses were two beautiful homes next to eachother that they called Casamigos. George was always entertaining and had his friends around, and we a generous and gracious host, and we were drinking a lot of tequila, and decided to make our own."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Casamigos</span></p><p class="caption">Mike Meldman, George Clooney, and Rande Gerber.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"We didn't ever really make it to sell it, [we just thought] my projects and Rande's bars and [it being] what George drank would be enough to make it successful."</p><p>However, without even realising, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-clooney-tequila-brand-casamigos-started-by-accident-2017-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the trio were bringing in about 1,000 bottles</a>, and were told by their distiller that they needed to get licensed.</p><p>Once they did, the brand "immediately took off" due to word of mouth and started winning awards.</p><p>"There weren't roles that were drawn up, but Rande had a creative role and ran things," Meldman said. George, we just put a shirt on. [He thought] "if paparazzi is going to chase me I might as well sell my tequila."</p><p>Meanwhile, Meldman was the one with the connections. "For almost every major [restaurant or grocery] chain in the country, either the money behind it or the CEO was a member of one of my projects," he said.</p><p>"I don't use the membership for anything because it's a private club, but I was able to at least make a call and ask for favours. Everyone was really nice to us about it, we were able to get into a lot of places faster than we would if we didn't [have those connections.]"</p><p><em><strong>See more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-clooney-tequila-brand-casamigos-started-by-accident-2017-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The $1 billion sale of George Clooney's tequila company just made him 2018's highest-paid actor - here's the story of how the brand was set up by accident</a></em></p><h2>'We have money to do things we couldn't do before'</h2><p>Now, he added: "We are wholly owned subsidiary of Diageo so nothing has really changed that much other than that we have a lot more money. They're trying to open up the rest of the world for us but we're still running the US.</p><p>"We have money to do things we couldn't do before... Since we sold to Diageo we doubled our sales."</p><p>Gerber also confirmed to Business Insider that the involvement of the trio has remained the same.</p><p>"Absolutely nothing has changed... It's business as usual," he said. "George, Mike, and I are passionate about Casamigos and everything we do."</p><p>Meldman added: "Casamigos is probably the fastest-growing spirit of all time, and we did it all in four years. It's successful because it's a good product. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to imitate it and try to do it, but it was a lot of work from all three of us - we underestimated the amount of work. If we knew how much effort and work it took I don't know if we actually would have done it.</p><p>"For me, it became part of my everyday life but it was a lot of work to get the brand out there, to get distribution."</p><p>There's some fun that comes along with being involved with Casamigos, though.</p><p><span style="color: #000000;">Meldman got to attend <a href="https://www.thisisinsider.com/category/princess-eugenie-royal-wedding" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the royal wedding of Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank</a>, Casamigos' European Brand Manager, back in October.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;"><em><strong>See more:</strong> <a href="https://www.thisisinsider.com/princess-eugenie-royal-wedding-jack-brooksbank-george-clooney-casamigos-tequila-2018-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jack Brooksbank says he's in charge of drinks for his royal wedding to Princess Eugenie - and there'll be plenty of George Clooney's tequila on offer</a></em></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">The company also continues to throw <a href="https://www.thisisinsider.com/inside-casamigos-2018-halloween-parties-best-celebrity-costumes-2018-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">its annual star-studded Halloween parties</a> each year.</span><span style="color: #ff0000;"></span><span style="color: #ff0000;"></span></p><h2><span style="color: #000000;">'Successful people rewarding themselves for their success'</span></h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Discovery Land Company</span></p><p class="caption">Mike Meldman.</p></div><p></p></div></div>However, Discovery, which claims to have consistently sold $1 billion in real estate a year, remains the main focus for Meldman, who now lives in Arizona, where the company's corporate HQ is based.</p><p><span style="color: #000000;">Discovery launched onto the east cost for the first time last year with its Silo Ridge property and also opened Dune Deck Beach Club in Westhampton, New York.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">"We have a lot going on," Meldman said, adding that the company is launching a project called "Driftwood" in Austin, "Troubador" in Nashville, and "Barbuda Ocean Club" in Barbuda, which will start as a hurricane relief effort re-building schools, hospitals, and infrastructure.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">Philanthropy has become a big part of the business, and Meldman founded the <a href="https://discoverylandcofoundation.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Discovery Land Foundation</a> in 2007 to support the places and people (particularly children) around the resorts.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">The charity claims to put "hundreds of millions a year into the community," contributing funds from Discovery and hosting events and tournaments and the resorts.</span></p><p><em><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>See more:</strong> <a href="https://www.thisisinsider.com/inside-casamigos-2018-halloween-parties-best-celebrity-costumes-2018-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Inside George Clooney and multimillionaire Rande Gerber's star-studded Halloween parties, hosted in both LA and Vegas</a></span></em></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">Now with three sons, aged five, 28, and 30, allowing successful people an opportunity to connect with their families is a clear focus for Meldman.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">"The demographic is really just successful people rewarding themselves for their success, and also investing in their family," he said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">"One of the only regrets a lot of successful people have is not spending enough time with their families, and the clubs are places families want to go."</span></p>      <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-ceo-net-worth-makes-spends-money-2018-11">Tim Cook's estimated net worth is $625 million - here's how he makes and spends his money</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

George Clooney and Rande Gerber have a third partner in their $1 billion tequila company, and he happens to be a real estate tycoon

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Poojan Kumar</span></p><p class="caption">PernixData Poojan Kumar as a teen kid chess champion</p></div><p></p></div></div>The classic Valley success story goes something like this: a geeky kid falls in love with computers at a very early age, learns to code, invents something cool in college, and drops out to do a startup. </p><p>That's about the exact opposite of how Poojan Kumar came to be CEO of a hot storage startup called PernixData, which has raised $62 million in VC funding, including backing from famous angels like Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce.</p><p>In the three years since it's been out of stealth, it's landed more than 650 <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> customers and grown to 200 employees with offices worldwide. </p><h2><strong>"The most interesting three years of my life"</strong></h2><p>Kumar never dreamed of being a tech CEO when he was kid.</p><p>He grew up in a middle-class family in India. His dad, who had grown up in Russia, loved to play chess. He taught his 12-year-old son to play and soon Kumar was beating his dad at the game. The proud dad enrolled Kumar in a local tournament, which he won, earning him the "budding Grandmaster award."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>PernixData</span></p><p class="caption">All grown up today, PernixData CEO Poojan Kumar talks with some employees at a party.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"And that began the most interesting three years of my life," Kumar told Business Insider.</p><p>The teenage Kumar started playing chess professionally. His dad even hired a chess tutor.</p><p>"Contrary to popular belief, what it takes to learn the game is not about playing a lot and becoming good. It's more about solving problems," Kumar says. The trick is to look at the board and work out the end result of every possible move - without touching the board.</p><p>"It's not different than a mathematical problem except you had to do it in your head," he recalls.</p><p>He spent his teens studying chess for 3 to 4 hours a day, and winning tournaments against other teens his age, first locally, then nationwide, then internationally.</p><p>People started calling him the next "Vishy Anand" an famous Indian chess Grandmaster and multi-time World Chess Champion.</p><h2><span>His dad ended his chess career</span></h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Poojan Kumar</span></p><p class="caption">Poojan Kumar as a kid chess champion</p></div><p></p></div></div>At age 15, he was on track to make chess his career, when his dad pulled the plug.</p><p>"He never anticipated it as a career path for me. He, thought it was going to be a recreational thing," Kumar remembers.</p><p>His dad worried how hard it was to make a living playing chess. </p><p>"One thing in common among all the players I saw, including coaches, they were all very poor.  Chess is not a glamorous game, hence there's no money in the game," he said.</p><p>What else should his brilliant son do? Become a computer programmer.</p><p>Looking back, Kumar says "I'm happy my dad made that decision for me. Chess is great, and I'll keep it as a hobby but it was time to go back and focus on higher education."</p><p>So Kumar took all those hours he had spent studying chess and all that expertise in problem-solving and spent them studying to get into the most prestigious tech school in the country, the Indian Institute of Technology. </p><p>IIT is like MIT, only it was harder to get in to in those days. It only accepted about 100 students a year into its computer science program. With India's population of a billion people, it's almost statistically impossible to get accepted.</p><p>But Kumar got in. It was a "life-changing event," he says. And he graduated at the top of his class. </p><p>So he doubled down on his luck and once again tried to do the impossible: get his master's degree in the US at Stanford. This was 1999, and Stanford only accepted maybe 5 students a year from IIT, he says.</p><p>Stanford accepted Kumar and gave him a full-ride scholarship.</p><p>The Stanford grad program is where he met his one-day co-founder, Satyam Vaghani. <span>Vaghani </span>would go on to join a little Stanford startup called VMware - now worth about $20 billion as a subsidiary of EMC - as one of its earliest employees. He stayed there until he and Kumar started PernixData in 2012.</p><p>At Stanford, Kumar caught the startup bug. It was the height of the internet bubble.</p><p>"Google was just getting formed. People were dropping out to start startups. I got enamored and came close to dropping out for an idea."</p><p>But before he could leave school for his startup, the bubble burst and "the whole thing crashed," he said. </p><h2>Oracle came calling</h2><p>With the startup world dead, Oracle showed up at Stanford and swooped up the brightest engineers, offering them good salaries.</p><p>"Oracle was loving the fact that it could attract Stanford computer graduates. A Stanford CS guy never even looked that direction but three of us joined Oracle from Stanford at that time," Kumar jokes about it now.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>PernixData</span></p><p class="caption">Poojan Kumar CEO (white shirt, right) hangs with PernixData employees. From left to right:Guangcheng Lu - MTS, Karthik Dwarakanath, Gokul Nadathur, Tina Kim,Sameer Narkhede, Akshita Jain,  Poojan Kumar and Meher Buddharaju.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The startup bug still had him, so he did it within Oracle.</p><p>There was a new kind of database becoming popular, known as a data warehouse (the precursor to today's big data trend). It stored a lot of stuff on low-cost servers so companies could analyze information for business insights. </p><p>Oracle didn't have a data warehouse product so Kumar and a couple of other guys decided to build one. "I thought, this is my chance to kind of do a startup, but at a big company," he says.</p><p>They got a vice president to sign off on the project, and they built a prototype in their spare time.</p><p>Oracle founder Larry Ellison wasn't involved in the project until he saw the prototype. After he saw it, "We got a blank check from Larry go and make it happen," Kumar says.</p><p>This would become Oracle's Exadata product. It ultimately became so successful, CEO Larry Ellison bought a hardware company, Sun Microsystems, to boost it.</p><p>As Exadata took off to<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/global-cio-oracle-reveals-strategy-and-customers-for-white-hot-exadata/d/d-id/1090713?"> become a multi-billion product for Oracle</a>, Kumar became a star engineer at Oracle.</p><h2>And then he failed</h2><p>But Kumar still longed to do an actual startup. So in 2007, he left Oracle to launch a company called PixBlitz.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://twitter.com/SatyamVaghani/status/413121105952378880">Satyam Vaghani</a></span></p><p class="caption">PernixData co-founder Satyam Vaghani</p></div><p></p></div></div>After he dumped his personal money into it and raised "a couple million" in VC seed money, the economy crashed in 2008.</p><p>Kumar couldn't raise any more money, and he couldn't sell the company. So he closed shop.</p><p>"And that was the end of my first try of doing something of my own outside," he laughs about it now.</p><p>He got hired by VMware, where his old friend Vaghani worked although the two didn't work together. He stayed there for nearly two years until VMware opted to spin out his area into a new company called Pivotal.</p><p>Meanwhile, after a long career at VMware, Vaghani was ready to move on, too. So the two launched PernixData.</p><p>And Kumar's luck kicked back in, coupled with his hard work ethic.</p><p>The two instantly landed $7 million from angels like John Thompson (Microsoft's chairman) and Mark Leslie (former CEO of<span> Veritas Software). They got the backing</span> based on their reputations at VMware and Oracle and a 35-slide PowerPoint. They didn't even have a prototype.  ("We joked that the deck was worth $200,000 a slide," Kumar tells us.)</p><p>PernixData solves an interesting problem for enterprises related to flash storage. Flash is the same kind of storage on your smartphone or thumb drive, but has gradually moved into more powerful computers thanks to its speed - it's a lot faster to read and write data to it than older forms of storage.</p><p>PernixData's software that takes all the flash storage companies have across all of their computer servers and other storage systems and turns it into one giant pool of very fast flash storage that can be used for a company's most important business apps. </p><p>As <span>Vaghani describes it, these companies suddenly have access to more storage that works faster.</span></p><p>And companies seem to be eating it up. With the founders' deep industry connections in the storage industry, PernixData quickly landed a whole roster of marquee customers from <a href="http://pernixdata.com/customers">Adobe to Costco to US Bank.</a></p><p>At the same time, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/storage-exec-explains-market-melt-down-2016-1">flash storage industry is melting down</a> and this, oddly enough, is creating more opportunity for their software product, not less.</p><p>Giant EMC is distracted by its proposed merger with Dell. Younger public storage contenders like Nimble, Pure Storage, and Violin Memory are embattled in their own struggles as flash storage becomes cheaper and more commoditized, filled with competition from bigger players like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and, more recently, Hitachi.</p><p>"As the top collapses in our industry, this is a significant opportunity for us in a market with billions of dollars of market cap," he says. "New companies like us have the opportunity to become the next billion-dollar companies."</p><p>In fact, he says, it's a lot like playing chess.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/weird-1970-bug-bricks-iphones-stop-working-jan-1-2016-2">This weird bug is making some iPhones crash and stop working</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="p5bDJ2MDE6qipcaVldoIJOEU66f1QqXS" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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