ASM LABZThen they built a company anyway. One nursery friendship, one JEE batch, one free website, one ₹5 lakh lesson and one very generous surname. Pull up a chair. This is the full highlights package.
WHY "ASM"? THE GREATEST SACRIFICE IN GULLY CRICKET
Ali. Shivam. Shailesh. Write the initials on a whiteboard and you get… A. S. S. Not ideal on an invoice. Not ideal in a client meeting. Definitely not ideal in a LinkedIn bio.
Three engineers. One problem. Zero solutions. Then Shailesh did what every great all-rounder does: he retired his first initial and walked out to bat as Mishra. He gave the company his surname. A-S-M. Ali, Shivam, Mishra. ASM Labz was born.
The team got a company name. Shailesh got bragging rights for life. He brings it up at least once a week. Twice if a deadline is close.
"Biggest sacrifice in Indian cricket since the nightwatchman." · Shailesh, about Shailesh
THE HIGHLIGHTS PACKAGE · 8 CHAPTERS
Narrated in our own words, with the occasional roast. Mostly of ourselves. Sometimes of the industry. Usually deserved.
CHAPTER 01THE TOSS
Ali and Shailesh started talking in nursery and never really stopped. Both still claim they won the toss. Both are lying. In cricket they call this a partnership.
Two decades later, they still argue like it's the last over.
CHAPTER 02THE NETS
Years later, in an IIT-JEE coaching class, Shailesh sat in the same batch as Shivam. Two guys solving physics at 6 AM, both quietly suspecting the syllabus wasn't the whole game.
Through Shailesh, the three of us met and clicked: the same ambition, the same restlessness, the same feeling that the usual path wasn't going to be enough. Team selected. No selectors were consulted.
CHAPTER 03THE BOUNCER
Like lakhs of students every year, we gave JEE everything. It didn't go our way. No IIT seat. No fairy tale.
We landed in tier-3 colleges, where the best tech, the best mentors and the real opportunities always felt one floor above us. Then we did what was expected: standard 9-to-5 jobs at traditional firms. Steady salary. Small life. A manager who called an Excel sheet "the system".
Retired hurt? Please. We just changed the batting order.
CHAPTER 04NIGHT MATCH
After office hours we worked with small startups and took every freelance job we could. Ali, a mechanical engineer, designed brands and learnt how founders really run their businesses. Shailesh and Shivam shipped project after project, building the portfolio no degree could give them.
Slowly, quietly, we built our own customer base. The quiet goal: prove a missed IIT doesn't decide how far you go.
Floodlights on, laptops open, chai on repeat.
CHAPTER 05THE ₹5 LAKH BALL
A real estate company needed a website. We built it for free, in five days, just to have something real on our résumé. Then we found out they had already paid ₹5 lakh for the same website.
Five lakh. For a website we built between dinner and the second innings. The work hadn't felt hard. It hadn't felt slow. That's when it hit us: the problem was never the technology. It was how technology was being sold.
Somebody got clean bowled by a quotation. It wasn't us.
CHAPTER 06THIRD UMPIRE
Big quotes. Vague proposals. Simple things dressed up as rocket science, so nobody questions the bill. And the client, the one actually paying, kept outside the dressing room, not sure what they even need.
So we decided to be the opposite: clear scope before any price, tech explained in plain words, and the client involved at every step. If you want to know what a website should really cost, we wrote it all down.
No jargon. No "synergy". No "it's in the pipeline".
CHAPTER 07CAPTAIN'S CALL
ASM was always the plan. A mechanical engineer who understands operations, from the factory floor to the end user, can see the real problem. A CS engineer and an IT engineer can build the real solution.
Most vendors either understand your business or write code. We do both, in one team, from the first conversation to go-live: operations, brand and design, and software and platforms.
Three vendors replaced by three friends. Fewer meetings, more chai.
CHAPTER 08THE CLIMB
The free website led to a small, badly underpaid project. Then a paid one. Then another. Each one raised the bar: websites, e-commerce, then ERP, project control and 3D tours, and now full business platforms.
Today: six live client websites, a full e-commerce store, business software in daily use, a 3D walkthrough tour, two full platforms in build and a new vertical, digital invitations.
Still batting. Nowhere near declaring.
ABOUT US · THE SHORT VERSION
ASM Labz began with three friends and three engineers: mechanical, computer science and IT. Ali and Shailesh have known each other since nursery; Shivam joined through Shailesh's JEE coaching batch. JEE didn't go our way, so we built our own path after hours. Our first website was built free in five days, for a client who had paid ₹5 lakh for the same thing. Today we're a custom software development company and a remote software development team in India. We build around how your business already works, so your team has nothing new to learn and you can go live whenever you're ready.
QUALITY FIRST. EFFICIENT ALWAYS.
THE CAST · THE TEAM SHEET
Why it works: one of us knows how your business runs end to end. Two of us can build anything it needs.
Knows how a business really runs, from manufacturing to the product in the end user's hands. Maps the real process before a single line of code, then shapes the brand around it.
Ali's friend since nursery and Shivam's JEE batchmate: the reason we are one team. Designs and builds the software our clients run their business on.
Met Shailesh in IIT-JEE coaching and built his portfolio one project at a time. Turns messy, real-world processes into platforms that just work.
WHERE WE STAND TODAY
Bring us any problem or use case. We'll get it done. That confidence is where our tagline comes from: Quality first. Efficient always.