๐Ÿ†” About Me | Akshay Deo ๐Ÿ†” About Me · Akshay Deo

Head of Importers @ Postman

2023 - Present
Focusing on Engineering and Product aspects of bringing a variety of definitions/specifications/any representation of API within Postman in one click.
Product lines include
  1. Importers
  2. Exporters
  3. Interceptors for Browsers
  4. Network Proxy for OS and Browsers

Head of Product Engineering @ Postman

2021 - 2022
Currently, I am focussing and building foundation for Postman Tools as Head of Product and Engineering.
Join the mission ๐Ÿš€ from Pune, Bangalore or remote.

Senior EM @ Postman

2020 - 2021
I was associated with five products
  1. API Design and Mock
  2. Search & Reporting
  3. Documentation
  4. API Network
  5. API Platform
Join the mission ๐Ÿš€ from Pune, Bangalore or remote.

Staff Engineer @ Slack

2019-2020
I worked as a Staff Engineer at Slack. Since I have been part of Slack,
  • I have worked on Calls Platform as a contributor.
  • I laid the technical foundation for Shortcuts as a Tech Lead.
  • Lead an internal automation tool as a Tech Lead. One of the core feature is, write one test case and run it against any Slack client ie Android, iOS, Web and Desktop.
Frankaffe Logo
Product failures bring in real insights, like a spear sharpening for whatโ€™s next. Dare to fail fast to succeed.

Akshay wrote his first code for a construction company at the age of fourteen; his favourite toy in his childhood had been his fatherโ€™s precious Intel 286. At twenty-three, he built a product that raised seed funding and was later acqui-hired by one of the top five global ad-tech companies; and presently works as a Staff Engineer at Slack.

June 18, 2020

Joining forces with Media.Net

2016 - 2019
When Google announced Instant Apps for Android, we decided to shut down AppSurfer with a detailed blog post. Vaibhav Arya, then CTO and now CEO of Media.net, read this blog post and offered us to join forces with Media.Net. I worked with Media.Net for 3 years as a Senior TLM and Pune site lead.

Back to consultancy

2015 - 2016
When we were almost out of ๐Ÿ’ต, I went back to consulting to support the development of AppSurfer. During that time I worked with one of the best Fintech startups in India, Simpl. I built the first version of Simpl's Android App, SDK and realtime authentication microservice in Golang.

Twist, a better stick than Amazon FireStick ๐Ÿคฉ

2014 - 2016
Responsive image After AppSurfer, we briefly worked on a hardware product called Twist. The vision for the product was, to convert the most powerful computer in everyones' pocket i.e. smart phones into a remote control for the TV. We took this idea a little further, by converting phones into a game controller as well ๐Ÿคฉ.

But we were on a very thin runway, and couldn't launch it into the market ๐Ÿ’”.

Startup life

2011 - 2016
Yourstory Logo
Solapur boy Akshay Deo wants to build a world-class โ€˜true tech productโ€™ out of India

Internet speed is commonly expressed as Mbits/second. It only takes a split second to have information travel thousands of kilometers. But, in some parts of the world it often takes years for technology to reach. However, for people with passion and a genuine desire to learn, nothing can be a barrier. Akshay Deo is one such person...

December 8, 2015

At the age of 23 (2012), I founded a company called RainingClouds along with 3 other co-founders. We built a product, AppSurfer, which in brief, runs Android on the cloud and can stream on any platform. We got a lot of buzz in tech blogs ๐Ÿ—ž.

TechCrunch Logo
AppSurfer Takes Android Apps To The Browser, Lets You Embed Them Anywhere

Amazonโ€™s Appstore for Android has long allowed consumers to test apps in the browser before purchase, but a new startup debuting now wants to offer an alternative. AppSurfer, as the company is called, has a bigger vision: it wants to become the โ€œYouTube of Android apps.โ€
March 21, 2013

TechCrunch Logo
App Demo Platform AppSurfer Lets You Test Apps On Facebook

AppSurfer, an Indian startup working to bring Android applications to the browser so users can โ€œtry before they buy,โ€ is today launching an Android application which lets users browse, test, then install the applications they like.
October 11, 2012

TheNextWeb Logo
AppSurfer lets you trial Android apps directly in your Facebook News feed

Now, a new service called AppSurfer has arrived on the scene and is taking this โ€˜try before you buyโ€™ philosophy a step further, with Android apps embeddable on any website AND in Facebook news feeds.
November 27, 2012

TechCrunch Logo
AppSurfer adds tablet apps to web-based try-before-you-buy Android app demos

AppSurfer, the online demo site for Android smartphone apps that launched last October, is now letting developers offer tablet apps, too. While buying an app for a couple of bucks may not be a big deal, no one wants to waste money. So try-before-you-buy is a great idea, especially for those apps that you canโ€™t fully evaluate within the 15-minute Google Play refund period.
January 21, 2013


We successfully raised 1 crore INR (~200K ๐Ÿ’ฐ) as seed funding from One97 Mobility fund run by Vijay Shekhar Sharma (PayTM founder). For the next couple of years, we tried multiple use cases around this tech but sooner or later the economics of running the business and revenue did not match to convert this into a profitable business ๐Ÿ˜ž. Eventually, most of the products we had built were built by Google. We detailed out this journey in an official blog post..

College

2006 - 2010
I completed my computer engineering from PICT. As a final year project, we built the world's first Remote Desktop Client (RDP) for Android devices, called Omnidesk. We had released this app in two versions, the free version with limited functionality, which got around 50-100k downloads, and the paid one costing between 2.5$-5$, which got around 10-50k downloads in 2009.

Btw I am also the proud owner of the world's first Android phone i.e. HTC G1 which is demoed in the first video ๐Ÿ˜Œ.