About

Last updated: Jan 12, 2024

Hi there, I’m Rajan Balana.

I was born and brought up in a very small town, Sri Vijay Nagar, Rajasthan. I am currently working remotely from Chandigarh with PriorityPass as Tech Lead — Mobile. Prior to that, I worked as an engineering manager with Compass and OYO. Before moving to the leadership role, I had worked as an iOS dev with 1mg and DMI. I used to run a tech blog while in college, though it’s not active any more.

I started my tech journey long before I started working professionally in the industry. I still remember my first phone, Nokia 1100, my parents gave me when I left my home for further studies. I was in 10th grade. When I was in 12th grade, I bought a new phone for myself. This phone was the most picturesque phone of the time, Nokia 6600. This phone opened up the immense world of Internet for me for the very first time. I was fortunate to have easy access to new gadgets because of one of my close relatives who had a mobile shop.

I always had an irresistible itch to explore every feature of the phone. To scratch the itch, I used Google a lot and read through as many articles as I could read. A lot of these articles were written by tech bloggers. At the end of the article, a brief description about the author can be found. My curiosity didn’t let me stop there. I explored further and read about these bloggers. That’s when I came to know that these people make money from their website. At first, I thought it was some kind of scam. I couldn’t believe that these people were making so much money by just putting banner ads on their website. It was fascinating. I followed few bloggers and continuously read about their journey and progress. Later, I started my own tech blog.

I made some amount of money from blogging and bought myself an iPhone and MacBook Pro. In my last year of college, I was having a discussion with one of my blogger friends on what should I do next with my life. He suggested looking at the iOS development since I had everything required to get started into app development. Long story short, I embarked on my journey to work as a professional iOS developer.