Dawn in Idukki
Gopakumar Gopalan
Gopakumar Gopalan
11+ years leading digital media team.
18+ years of web / application development.

A result-oriented Operations Manager, a Creative Director who envisions out-of-the-box design ideas and is spot on to the details, and a Software Developer, who works on multiple software stacks and cutting-edge technologies; All these roles suit me well.

Hailing from a small town Kochi, in the southern state of Kerala (KL), India, all my education was in Kerala itself. My first two jobs also were in Kerala. Later I moved to the Middle East in the year 2009. You may find my entire career story as a timeline, further down.

I worked for many famous brands and business houses, providing high-quality digital services. I lead the Digital Department which offers Digital portfolios, Portals, Microsites, EDMs, Mobile Applications, Games, Online Activations/Promotions, and many likewise services as a Digital Media Agency.

Though I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Commerce (Marketing), my interest was always in Web and Software development. I learned the technologies, tools, and good practices all by myself. Learning is a never-ending process for me. I always look forward to learning new promising technologies every day. As a self-taught developer, most of the time I get the hardest route to learn. That helped me in staying self-motivated and perpetually learn and expanding knowledge.

You may be wondering what gopumon is. It is just an alias name those who are close to me call. I have a formal alias name “GK”, which are the initials of my name.

My knowledge, passion, skills, experiences, and achievements are illustrated in detail below. Going through that will give you an overview of me. You may contact me if you feel a meeting with me can help you in determining how my skills, knowledge, and experience can be put together to your benefit.

Leadership & Administration

While leading the digital media department; a team of developers, creatives, and marketing executives, for over 11 years, I gained leadership and administrative experiences. You can see below where I stand in those areas of expertise.

Project Management
80%
Team Leadership
75%
Client Relations
70%
Resource Management
80%
Business Development
70%

Design & Development

I have been designing and developing web / mobile applications for the past 18 years. With knowledge and experience from all these years, I can find myself with the following levels of expertise in development.

LAMP Stack Development (Slim / Laravel / Symfony)
90%
ME*N Stack Development (Angular / React / Vue)
85%
MySQL / MongoDB / MongoDB Atlas / FireStore
70%
Apache / NGiNX / Plesk / GCP / AWS
70%
Creative Design & Branding
75%
Graphics & Animation
80%

Technologies & Tools

There are many tools and technologies I use for development, production, and deployment. The following are the most used tools and technologies.

JavaScriptAngularNodeJsReactVueReduxGraphQLMongoDBReact NativeIonicFlutterDartPHPMySQLSlim FrameworkLaravelSymfonyCodeigniterJoomlaWordpressPrestaShopGITWebpackParcelSCSSHTML 5YarnComposerC#Unity 3D3DS MaxBlenderAdobe PhotoshopAdobe IllustratorAdobe InDesignAdobe After EffectsAdobe PremierFinal Cut ProApple MotionVisual Studio CodeDockerFirebaseDynamoDBMongoDB AtlasCloud BuildCloud RunEC2S3AWS Lambda

Career & Milestones

I started my career as a freelance web designer even before my university studies. I worked on small websites using HTML, Flash, and JQuery in the early days of my career. After my graduation, with my freelance experience, I persuade a career in web development. The timeline below illustrates major milestones in my career to date.

  • June, 2005

    Web / Flash Developer

    Cyberland Pvt. Ltd, Kerala, India

    My job was creating websites with Flash and HTML. While freelancing my experience in ActionScript got me the job right after my graduation. I created many Flash based website and interactive contents during my tenure.

  • March, 2006

    Project Leader

    Femtotech Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Kerala, India

    Joined the firm as a PHP Developer. Worked on many verticals and customized solutions. Later in the career, lead the PHP Dev team on various projects.

  • August, 2006

    Real Estate Portal

    Femtotech Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Kerala, India

    I happened to be the product owner, lead developer, and core programmer for this customizable vertical solution that caters to real estate property developers and brokers. The main features of the project are detailed property listing including photo and video gallery, advanced search with many search filters, live support with chat, and booking callbacks.

  • February, 2009

    Relocation to Middle-East

    Relocated to Doha - Qatar with my parents, and started freelancing on small websites and web-based applications. After a few months, relocated to Dubai - UAE in search of new prospects and continued freelancing. Abiding by employment laws in the country I had to take up a position in a firm to continue my career.

  • April, 2010

    Senior Developer

    Thampy Digital, Dubai, U.A.E

    My first-ever experience in a Digital Media Agency. Focused more on client projects than verticals. Got a chance to expand my skill set. Hands-on experience in Gaia Framework for Adobe Flash, Expression Engine (CMS), and Codeigniter.

  • January, 2011

    In-House Headless CMS

    Thampy Digital, Dubai, U.A.E

    As a Digital Media Agency, we were constantly approached for the development of microsites and websites in a short turnaround time. It was the need of the time to have a Headless CMS where we have a rigid back-end system that can manage content for websites. The system can be extended with a custom extension for additional functionalities.

  • May, 2012

    Invitation & Registration System

    Thampy Digital, Dubai, U.A.E

    Developed an RSVP and Guest registration system for a well-known business group in the MENA region. The system is used to maintain RSVP details of guests for business events conducted by various businesses/brands under the group. The system has user-based access control, automated personalized entry tickets, guest checkout, and reporting statistics.

  • August, 2012

    Facebook Game

    Thampy Digital, Dubai, U.A.E

    A Facebook game for an international FMCG brand for their products targeting young children. The game was part of a marketing campaign to increase reach through their official Facebook page.

  • August, 2012

    Founded InfinityCube

    A creative studio catering digital services. We have a decent clientele under InfinityCube. Apart from paid projects, we work on some open-source projects in the interest of benefiting the developer community.

  • November, 2012

    Operations Lead - Digital Media

    Allabout Marketing, Dubai, U.A.E

    Heading the digital department at Allabout brought me the opportunity to expand my capacity to manage projects, developers, designers, and liaison with clients.

  • December, 2014

    Game With Live Leaderboard

    Allabout Marketing, Dubai, U.A.E

    Interactive Puzzle game on the Unity3D platform, create as a part of lead generation activation. A large display leaderboard with top scores is also integrated. The game focused on USPs and brand propositions.

  • May, 2017

    Angular Gravatar (NPM Package)

    InfinityCube

    An Angular directive that displays the Gravatar image based on the email provided. It works on Angular 6 and above. The package also has a service that can generate the URL for the Gravatar image. Visit the NPM package download page for more details.

  • April, 2018

    FoodWatch App (Augmented Reality)

    DifferentAngles, Dubai, U.A.E

    An augmented reality demo app for Dubai International Food Safety Conference by Dubai Municipality - Food Safety department. There were a desktop app and a mobile app, both created in Unity3D using Vuforia for augmented reality. You may watch the exhibition video here. Please visit DifferentAngles website for more information

  • April, 2020

    QuickSite (Slim 4 Scaffolding)

    InfinityCube

    A scaffolding based on Slim 4 Framework, with Twig templates, Doctrine ORM, Doctrine Migrations, and Slim Sessions. The scaffolding gives a head start for the project by setting up a file structure and configurations so that you can concentrate on the project features. Visit Packagist for QuickSite to know more.

  • September, 2020

    Full Stack Developer

    Exiniti

    A FinTec startup developing CRM for trading platforms like MT4, MT5, etc. Development is on MERN stack and DevOps on Azure Cloud.

I have been a part of many amazing projects in my career. In many roles spanning from a developer to project lead, and product manager to the operations lead, I gained experience in all stages of a project lifecycle. To see some of my selected solo projects, kindly visit the portfolio section.