We’ve reached the peak of human brainrot: the age of memes, and it’s the only thing today keeping the internet stitched together. The culture is so far gone that every minor situation has a new meme made in seconds, where we’re all collectively losing our minds at the exact same point. The Frappe community has an elite memer of its own but the memer is doing more jobs than just making us laugh.
Born to become a musician, Saurabh had his own keyboard when he was nine. “Rushing home every day to the keyboard is such a joy to remember,” he said, and he’d spend the other half of the day at those black-and-white keys making music. He started his own YouTube channel and would record, edit and upload his music videos for 7 long years. By 17, the music had started to leave his room as he carried his keyboard to college shows and fests to perform in small sets. He poured every inch of his obsession and taste for playing the keyboard out on his YouTube channel, which he’d grown to 52,000 followers from scratch, to be exact. But at the height of his obsession, the internet showed no mercy and behaved ruthless. Saurabh woke up one day to a nightmare, as the channel he had built single-handedly was taken down by a copyright predator claiming one of his works as their own. “That day I put my keyboard under my bed and have never seen it ever since.” But can any you ever really sideline someone who was born to create?
“My mom and dad wanted me to take JEE and graduate from a well-known college and get a stable job.” Saurabh remembers stuffing his room with JEE books everywhere, only to have COVID shut the doors on coaching centers. “I lost the appetite for the grind and went for a B.Sc. in IT.” Like a kid in a new school, he finished his graduation with average grades and began scouting for internships. His first opening was a trainee role in web development for 5 months, where the business was using ERPNext. “Within 4 months, I self-taught all modules of ERPNext and took care of relevant tasks without help.” Betting on his own learning, he switched into a full-time ERPNext role and joined a company doing ERPNext services. For a while, nothing about this new job was not exciting, as he’d get small piece of problems to kill everyday. Over time, though, his days seemed to run in circles. “The company where I was working would not take ambitious projects, so the job felt like a job after one year.” The loose threads could not hold his interest and he made a switch as a Consultant at another company. The scope for Saurabh to spoil himself with independent initiatives here was too wide, and he could run as far as he pleased. “I was thrown onto the front lines of the full consulting loop, right from talking to customers, gauging their pains, designing solutions and bending ERPNext to their needs.”
“I wish I’d joined LinkedIn sooner. I knew Rushabh and Umair from my second company, so I made an account and pinged them a connection request. I read from their posts about open source and started posting myself too.” LinkedIn being a bare playground for Saurabh, he only posted things he was familiar with like ERPNext, features, version release, etc. “I posted for close to three months, but the ‘likes’ on my posts flagged that my content was just blending in with the sea of everyone else’s.” Saurabh had the exact braincell for what people call ‘herds are for cows and creatives break the fence.’ So he took a gamble, leaned into his fun-loving nature, and made his first ERPNext meme which pulled a dozen of eyeballs to start with. And from there, he got enough nerve to inject ‘fun’ into a rather famously serious ecosystem.
Saurabh's meme archives
None of this could have stemmed from a shallow or passing interest. If you ever sit across from Saurabh, you’d realise how his memes just lay the surface to his massively, intense obsession with ERPNext. “I pick the latest trend in the meme culture, try to tweak it with current happenings in ERPNext and that’s the recipe. Just keep testing and posting.” Whatever insights he scrapes and fills his pockets with, somehow end up as a meme. A tiny itch to do different has now taken Saurabh to a whole new high. “I got an email in the last Frappeverse saying I’d been nominated for Best Frappe Evangelist. I thought my eyes were lying to me so I shared the link with my friends to double-check. I attended my first Frappeverse and I actually won. I met Rushabh for the first time and I remember him telling me to keep making good memes. I wonder if my parents finally think there’s a future in shitposting” he laughs.
Since Saurabh’s family had been involved in real estate, the idea of having his own business was a given. “When life gives you ERPNext, you become partners!” he chuckled. By the end of 2024, he paired with one of his close connects to co-found a company that today provides ERP services to SMEs. “ERPNext is like a lego for a business. I’ve done it for many clients and I can easily see myself in this industry for the next 10 years." None of what Saurabh does today was part of his to-do list ever, but he seems to have a long path to walk now. “We started really small, from fitting around a coffee table to now having our small physical office in Hyderabad. One day, we must become a Frappe partner too.”
If not music, the sequel must make up for the loss somewhere else. Saurabh found his stage again as a memer and he is not nearing capacity anytime soon. And of course, like all great philosophers of our time, he signs off with: “Burn through your energy in your 20s while you still have it. Because in your 30s, you’ll need it for things like ‘sleeping six hours a day,’ or ‘cancelling trips.’
