AKASH (AKU) RAJ DASWANI
10/2/1973 – 29/8/2022
By Umesh Daswani
Aku was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa on 10th February, 1973, and he died after a short illness on 29th August, 2022 in London. He leaves behind a family who cared about him deeply. We are devastated to lose him at such a young age.
Aku was always his own man, an independent thinker who based his opinions on his experiences of the world. He was at ease with people of all backgrounds, and he went out of his way to help anyone who he felt to be disadvantaged.
He worked closely with his employees, treated them as friends, and always put their welfare high on his list of priorities.
His trust in people sometimes worked against him but he never lost that trust, except perhaps in relation to the medical profession! He was not the person to blindly accept everything his doctors told him during his final illness, and he had the spirit and the courage to re-assess his situation based on his own research.
A childhood friend, Ramsi Mirpuri, reminisced: “…I have had a close rapport with Aku since his childhood days. Aku, being a wee boy, would just tag along as a puppy in the melee. Aku started trading from around the age of 18. As he grew, I saw him turn into a fine young man who was very enterprising and challenging in his business endeavours. He was always attempting to maximise the opportunity presented by the digital era.”
Early in the 2000’s Aku developed a software product called Money-2-Study. This was an Amazon-style portal for students, with a portion of the profits being ploughed back to a foundation which helped students financially. It was always his way to give something back and keep less for himself.
His skilled entrepreneurship, his foresight, and his determination to beat the ‘big brands’ enabled him to achieve top listings on Amazon for some of his digital accessories. He launched an e-book well before Amazon came out with their Kindle, but he was thwarted by the slow development of digital infrastructure and bandwidth, and the marketing muscle of Amazon.
Despite this tussle with Amazon, his pleasure in instant gratification led to him becoming one of the most active customers of their Prime delivery service!
In recent years Aku created a range of Alexa skills for Amazon, with channels for health & fitness, make-up, and recipes.
The recipes were created by famous chefs such as Atul Kochar, who was a close friend. This initiative led to the development of a major skill, “Find me a job”, the world’s first voice technology-enabled job search product.
This in turn led to the development of a mobile job board, SnappCV, which became a trending download on the Alexa platform and has won awards for being one of the best tech innovations in the global recruitment industry.
In 2005, Aku was instrumental in sponsoring the first-ever Sindhi Sammelan held in London. He was generous with both his time and his financial help as he wanted to support his father’s dream of promoting the cause of Sindhi culture and language.
He loved Tottenham Hotspur! He was a fervent supporter with memorabilia everywhere, and he became friends with several players. In his early days he recruited Alan Shearer as a brand supporter because he liked him both as a player and a person, and he was hoping to convince him to join Spurs!
Aku even managed to persuade me to switch my allegiance from Liverpool to Tottenham!
Everyone remembers Aku as our little brother with the smiling and welcoming personality, always working on his new ideas and ventures.
Sadly, he had too little time to complete them all, but we should all learn from his example: we get just one chance at life, and we should make the most of it......
Just as Aku did.....
