November 9, 2011

Jerry Yang and David Filo - Founders of Yahoo!

Yahoo! inclusive was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995. On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! appointed Carol Bartz, former executive chairman of Autodesk, as its new chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors. On September 6, 2011, Bartz was removed from her position at Yahoo! by chairman Roy Bostock, over the phone; and CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company.
According to news sources roughly 700 million people visit Yahoo websites every month. However, Yahoo! itself claims it only attracts more than five hundred million consumers every month in more than 30 languages.

January 5, 2011

N.R. Narayana Murthy

N.R. Narayana Murthy, is an Indian industrialist, software engineer and one of the seven founders of Infosys Technologies, a global consulting and IT services company based in India. Infosys has 105,453 professionals (including subsidiaries) as of Nov. 9, 2009. It has offices in 22 countries and development centers in India, China, Australia, UK, Canada and Japan.

He is currently the non--executive Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys. He founded Infosys in 1981 along with 6 other software professional with an initial investment of Rs. 12000 only. He was the CEO of the company for 21 years, from 1981 to 2002. After stepping down as CEO in 2002, he has broadened his scope of activities to social services as well as promoting India globally. Born in a Kannada Madhva Brahmin Family in Mysore, India on August 20, 1946, Murthy graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Engineering, University of Mysore in 1967 after attending government school, and received his master's degree from IIT kanpur in 1969.

He retired from his executive position at Infosys on 20 August, 2006. However, he continues as the Non-Executive Chairman of the board.

N.R. Narayana Murthy
N.R. Narayana Murthy -"Leadership is all about courage to dream big".

Shiv Nadar

Shiv Nadar was born in 1945, he is the founder of HCL and Chairman of CEO of HCL technologies. At a time when India had a total of 250 computers, Shiv Nadar led a young team which passionately believed on the growth of the IT industry. His vision in a Delhi "barsaati" (like a garage) in 1976, has resulted into a US $ 2.3 Billion with 54000 professionals. HCL's business today spans IT hardware manufacturing and distribution, System Integration, BPO etc.

Shiv Nadar
Shiv Nadar firmly beleives that, "If you want to empower people, give them the tools. There's enough entrepreneurship in this country to take care of the rest." He is quick to grasp new oppurtunities, select a team to transform his ideas into reality.

January 4, 2011

Vinod Dham

Vinod Dham
Vinod Dham is popularly known as the father of the Pentium Processor. Born in 1950 in Pune, he had his initial schooling in Pune. In 1971 he completed his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering. In 1975, Vinod Dham went to the US and did his Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. After completing his Masters in 1997, Vinod was a team member of the NCR's memory design group. He received many patents for his work at NCR. While making a presentation at the IEEE conference in Monterrey, California on re-programmable memory, Vinod Dham received an offer from the Intel to work with them. In January 1990, Vinod was in-charge of developing the 586 or Pentium Processor. He worked relentlessly on the project and the Pentium processor was a big hit in the market. Vinod dham rose up the corporate ladder and reached the position of the Vice President of the Intel's Microprocessor Products Group. He quit Intel in 1995. He started his own business New Path Ventures.

Azim Hashim Premji

Azim Premji was rated the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 as per Forbes. Born on July 24, 1945, Azim Hashim Premji was studying Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, USA when due to the sudden demise of his father, he was called upon to handle the family business. Azim Premji took the reins of family business in 1966 at the age of 21.

Azim Premji
Started as a vegetable oil trading company in 1947 from the old mill founded by Azim Premji's father. He repositioned it and transformed Wipro into a consumer goods valued at $2 million. In 1977, when IBM was asked to leave India, Wipro entered the information technology sector. In 1980 Wipro moved into software development and started developing customized software packages for their hardware customers. His wealth in 2009 was estimated at US$5.7 billion which places him as the fifth richest Indian. As on today Wipro has employee strength of approximately 1 lac.

January 3, 2011

Vinod Khosla


Vinod Khosla born on January 28, 1955 is an India-born and an influential personality in Silicon Valley. Khosla was one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems where he would serve as first CEO & Chairman in the early 1980s and then became a general partner of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986 where he would remain through the early 2000s. In 2004 Khosla formed his own firm, Khosla Ventures focused on venture investments in various technology sectors, most notably clean technology.

Khosla's father was in the army and was posted at New Delhi, India. He read about the founding of Intel in Electronic Engineering Times at the age of fourteen and this inspired him to pursue technology as a career. Khosla went on to receive degrees from the IIT Delhi, India (Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering ), Carnegie Mellon University (Masters in Biomedical Engineering), and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).

In 2004 Khosla formed his own venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures. The firm is based in Menlo Park, California and manages approximately $1 billion of investor capital as well as investments funded by Khosla himself.
Vinod Khosla
In September 2009, Khosla completed fundraising for two new funds, to invest in cleantech and information technology start-ups. Khosla Ventures III secured $750 million of investor commitments to invest in traditional early stage and growth stage companies. Khosla also raised $250 million for Khosla Seed, which will invest in higher-risk opportunities. In May 2010 it was announced that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was to join Khosla Ventures to provide strategic advice regarding investments in environmentally friendly or helpful technologies.

Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia is one of the poster boys of Indian success story at Silicon Valley. He is better known as the man who co-founded Hotmai and best described as a "lifelong entrepreneur".

Along with Apple Computer engineer Jack Smith, he launched Hotmail in 1995, the first web-based e-mail service which made a significant impact in the way people interact with their personal information. On December 31, 1997, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for $400 million (Rs. 1800 Crores).

In January, 2008, Sabeer announced the launch of his venture SabSeBolo.com, a free web based teleconferencing system ("Sab Se Bolo" means "(Let's) Talk To Everyone" in Hindi). On 14th June 2009, Sabeer Bhatia's Sabsebolo acquired Jaxtr, the intenet telephone service startup for an undisclosed amount. Jaxtr shall function with the same brand name and help Sabsebolo with its large userbase.

Sabeer Bhatia
Future plans of his include the development of  a new city in India called Nanocity. The aim of Nanocity is to replicate the vibrancy and eco-system of innovation found in the Silicon Valley.