National Council for Cement and Building materials (NCB) , previously known as Cement Research Institute (CRI), is an apex R&D institute in the field of cement and building materials.

This is the firm which gave me the first break. Hiring me straight from my Engineering college as a GET (Graduate Engineering Trainee), I was taught everything from running a cement plant to actually climbing up the stack of a cement kiln and inserting a probe to measure the pollution. My interest in computers saved the day for me and I was very busy quickly in developing software solutions using GWBasic and a PC with just 256K of memory. (This experience gave me the foundation to write tight code). It was a "government " job with lax discipline but gave me a insight on how to use scarce resources to keep your mind occupied.