Once, in a conversation with Palkan and myself, Deepesh confessed to not being passionate about coding. “But that’s all you seem to do,” quipped Palkan, understandably confused. With over four thousand commits to date, Deepesh recently overtook ERPNext’s creator, Rushabh Mehta, to become its second biggest contributor. He routinely puts in the kind of work that brings one fame (he won the Best ERPNext Contributor award at Frappeverse last year) as well as infamy (he’s notorious for leaving people on read because he’s always got wayyy too much on his plate). If not passion, what could motivate him to do what he does? It’s simple. He wants to be the best.

Born in the city of Bombay, where no one sleeps and everyone hustles, Deepesh grew up living a near identical life to his twin brother. They went to school together, where they sat together and had all the same friends, then went to college together, where they did more of the same and landed the same job, before they decided to part ways to forge their own identities. His brother found a job at a blockchain startup while Deepesh secured one at Frappe Technologies. “I still remember my job interview. I spoke about Shah Rukh Khan and not much else.”

At Frappe, Deepesh wasted no time in finding his niche. “I made minor fixes and worked on small features here and there, but I mostly just cared about ERPNext, specifically the accounting module. I was fascinated with accounts, how you could understand so much about how a company functioned just by looking at a few reports. Which is ironic, because when I had to pick between Computer Science and Chartered Accountancy in school, I went with the former because I thought accounts would be too boring. But I love solving problems, and accounting has no dearth of those.” In addition to being Frappe’s go-to accounts guy, Deepesh works closely with an NBFC to help him create an open-source lending solution.

Giving a talk at Frappeverse ‘23

He doesn’t just want to stop there though. When Deepesh says he wants to be the best, he’s talking about everything. He tells me of this affirmation that Shah Rukh Khan, his favourite actor, starts his day with. “Every morning, he wakes up and tells himself that he is the best. And he doesn't say it with arrogance. He says it because it helps him get out of bed, because saying it reminds him that he has to do what it takes to remain number one. I don’t think I’m the best at anything right now, but I like to tell myself that I can be. I think there’s something in me that makes me unique, that sets me apart from even my twin. And I want to use that power to at least try to be the best I can be.”

And try, he does. Whatever he has to do, he always puts his best foot forward. He’s always impeccably dressed with never a hair out of place. If someone in his team is having a hard time, he’ll be sure to pick up the slack. He’d rather perfect an existing product than build something new. He does everything in his power to make things the best they can be, even when he doesn’t need to.

But it’s not easy, trying to do your best, especially when the world keeps presenting you with conflicting ideas on what the best is. “I’m in my twenties now and half the time, I think my twenties are for working hard and unearthing my true potential, but the other half, I think you only live once and I should be having fun and granting myself all the experiences I could. So what do I even work towards? How do I live a life where I don’t have to worry if I’m wasting it?” For now, he likes to straddle the line between the two philosophies.

It’s not enough for Deepesh to be the best though, he wants everyone to know it. Nothing lights him up just as much as getting recognition does. He doesn’t want fame just for the heck of it, he wants to be recognised for his work. “For now, that’s solving accounting problems, but I want more. I want to build my own business someday. A good portion of my family, my father included, runs their own businesses and I’ve always wanted to experience the kind of pride that comes with having one that you’ve built all on your own. I don’t know when though. Or even what’s stopping me. Maybe it’s that I hate doing anything half-heartedly and I haven’t found something I’d like to devote the rest of my life to building. Or maybe it’s just that I’m too scared to fail. But that’s what I want to do. That’s what I dream about.”