In Remembrance: Puneet Sahalot

Shocked, it is the smallest word to say. Possibly all of the friends, family members, classmates, and anyone who has worked with him, or met him, or anyone who belongs to the IT industry of Udaipur, would be able to relate on what I am feeling, and what a loss this city has just witnessed.

Puneet Sahalot, is no more with us. He passed away in a road accident yesterday. I have known and seen him in action since more than a decade. Puneet has been a co-founder of UdaipurTimes, a news portal of Udaipur, and then, went on to become one of the most prominent names in WordPress, in the country and across the globe. To give you a perspective, around 30% of the world’s websites, including your own UdaipurBlog, run on WordPress, an open source project, and Puneet was a real pro in it. In fact, he has many contributions to the WordPress core!

An engineer by profession, he chose to follow his heart, worked extensively on WordPress, aced thesis framework development and with passage of time, founded ideabox creations, that went on to become one of the best tech product based startups from Udaipur. Ideabox is a leading company in India and beyond, known for their WordPress based product solutions. Their plugins have more than 1,00,000+ installs, which is a big feat. The journey is nothing short of extraordinary! There are multiple interviews, speeches and memoirs that rightly claim, about his passion towards coding since an early age, and how he spearheaded the WordPress community in Udaipur, so much so that a small city like Udaipur was able to host its own WordCamps since past many years! My personal favourite quirky memory of him however, is his poetic side, a blog by the handle ‘I am Ajeeb’. Only a select few who knew, know!

Perhaps everyone who knew him wanted to become like him. An inspiration to many, multi talented, kind hearted, knowledgeable, a great personality, and a smiling face, gone too soon! The admiration and respect you have gathered for yourself is unmatchable! Never ever thought I would be blogging on anything after ages, that too on you. Puneet, you will be missed by everyone.

Picture credits: @psahalot on Instagram