Online community for researchers Knimbus hires MakeMyTrip's tech honcho

Gurgaon-based online community for researchers, Knimbus, has roped in Kunwar Asheesh Saxena as senior vice president, product development and engineering. Saxena was looking after the technology development as director at MakeMyTrip before this.

Knimbus, an online platform for the users of scientific, technical and medical (STM) knowledge, was started in 2010 by Rahul Agarwalla and Tarun Arora. Prior to starting Knimbus, Agarwalla was based in Japan, working with Uchida Spectrum Inc. Arora is also the CEO of GIST, a content reseller targeting the research community. Knimbus seeks to link researchers through a networking platform and provides relevant research material. In short, it aims to become a combination of LinkedIn and Google for researchers across the globe. Knimbus follows a freemium model wherein users can register for free but they don't have access to all the features which come with the institutional subscription package.

"I look forward to taking Knimbus' technology innovation to the next level and working with the team to execute a roadmap to achieve the next phase of growth," Saxena said.

Last we wrote about Knimbus, it had few thousand users on board which has now grown to about 65,000-70,000, with users from abroad as well. "Over 700 institutions are a part of Knimbus now and we are looking to grow that number as well," Aggarwalla, co-founder and CEO, Knimbus, told Techcircle. He said the company is looking to expand its 25-strong team this year.

Aggarwalla said the platform is going more social and interactive. "We have got feedback from users that they would want to share their own content as well. So, we would be launching a feature where researchers can upload their own articles, share and comment on them as well. We are looking at more user-generated content," he added.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)