Star Contributor of the Month – Maulik Soneji
We’re recognizing Maulik Soneji from Gandhinagar, India, as our Star Contributor for March. Maulik has only been a part of the Mifos community for a couple of months but in that time he’s really demonstrated his commitment to our cause for many years to come. It’s rare when you get volunteers that proactively come and are eager to contribute. Maulik showed up with an interest in mentoring for GSOC and immediately begin working with Mohit on the re-skinned Community App. He’s been an enthusiastic supporter of other contributors and always has great ideas to help improve our apps and our collaboration. He’s deeply aware of Fintech from his experience at Morgan Stanley and is eager to use that knowledge to help those at the Base of the Pyramid. We’re looking forward to working Maulik as a mentor for this GSOC and seeing all the impact he’ll have on our community.
Maulik Soneji – Gandhinagar, India
Brief Bio (in the words of Maulik):
I’m currently working as a Software Developer at lyearn.com building a Learning Management System to help companies train their employees and track their skillsets.
Away from the keyboard, I like spending time cycling, watching wildlife documentaries or reading tech blogs and medium articles.
Relevant Skills & Experience: I have been working on NodeJS, MongoDB, React JS for the last 6 months, prior to that I was working on Java based Web Applications using Java, Spring, Hibernate and Angular.
Maulik’s Impact:
Discovering Mifos:
I discovered Mifos last year when I started working at Morgan Stanley. I have learnt a lot about the Banking sector and the impact of FinTechs to provide banking to third world countries and that what got me started to contribute to Mifos.
Contributions Made to Date:
I have been working on the community app which is the web applications used at Mifos. I will be also be mentoring GSOC students and helping them to make the community app even better.
Current Projects: I plan to work on Self Service Web Application which would provide the user base of Mifos to view their transactions from a desktop application.
Impact on the Poor: It is the aim of my life to make a better impact on the lives of the under privileged. I feel that by contributing to Mifos, I am enabling the under privileged towards equal opportunities and financial welfare.
What’s Rewarding about Working on Mifos:
The fact that it is really easy to make a contribution to the projects. The community has long term contributors like Ed, Mohit and Gaurav who have been associated with community since long and been very helpful to anyone who is new to the community.
Top Piece of Advice for Others in the Mifos Community: I am very new to the community, so I don’t have an advice for the Mifos Community, but for the new contributors, I would like to say that try to engage with the community very often and ask questions. The projects will provide a lot of understanding about real world applications and how technology enables the world towards equal opportunities.
Fun Facts about Maulik
Favorite Food: Any programmer’s favorite food, Pizza.
Favorite Open Source Project: I have been working with GraphQL for the past 6 months and I find it really interesting. Apart from this, I like babel and elastic-search.
If Maulik Could Travel to One Place in the World: I like to visit hill-stations and go for a trek. There are many places where I would like to go like Switzerland and Alaska
Interesting fact/tidbit about yourself you’d like to share: I am a foodie, so I am in constant tussle with maintaining my weight. I sometimes go on a very strict diet and sometimes I go on a food fiesta.
You can find out more about Maulik at:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maulik-soneji-48512781/
- Blog: https://proclubdaiict.wordpress.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maulik.soneji
- Github – https://github.com/Mastermaulik/
