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| Book cover of 'The Game Changers: 20 extraordinary success stories of entrepreneurs from IIT Kharagpur' |
Suhas Patil: Cirrus Logic (founder), TiE (co-founder)
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| Suhas Patil |
What makes Suhas’s story so unique is that he was one of the first Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to succeed. He opened up a whole new territory for other technocrats from India who came to this promised land in hordes to contribute to its ever-growing success. In 1992, in order to help the increasing number of Indians who were starting up, he co-founded The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and became its founding President. His contributions as a mentor to many have placed him on the boards of a number of companies. Even at the ripe old age of 67, he continues to support new and exciting ideas.
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Vijay Kumar: Bharati Shipyard (co-founder)
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| Vijay Kumar |
In 2004, Bharati Shipyard became the first private shipyard in India to go public.
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Vinod Gupta: InfoUSA (founder)
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| Vinod Gupta |
Today, he is a multimillionaire and has committed all his wealth to charity. From the dusty village lanes of Uttar Pradesh to the corridors of power in the US, Vinod’s journey can only be called extraordinary.
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Sam Dalal: Funtime Innovations (Founder and Head)
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| Sam Dalal |
Funtime Innovations is the biggest supplier of self-created products to magicians around the world. Based in Kolkata, the company offers a range of over 1,500 products including magic tricks, books, and props.
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Sridhar Mitta: e4e Labs Pvt. Ltd. (Co-Founder and Chairman, Advisory Committee), NextWealth Entrepreneurs Pvt. Ltd. (Founder and Managing Director)
‘Indian IT and I have been fellow travellers’ - Dr Mitta.
Dr Sridhar Mitta can be described as one of the heroes of Indian IT folklore but he has always kept a low profile. There hasn’t been a historic moment in the IT history of India where Dr Mitta hasn’t played a part. He joined Wipro Limited in 1980, becoming their first employee. Since then he has shepherded Wipro, making it synonymous with the success of Indian IT in the global market. During his tenure as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), he helped Wipro become one of the highest valued companies in India. After Wipro, he founded EnThink Inc.- a California based company and co-founded e4e Labs Pvt. Ltd. in 2000 to help budding entrepreneurs to find their feet at the global level. He also founded NextWealth Entrepreneurs Pvt. Ltd. to nurture social entrepreneurship in India.
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Arjun Malhotra: HCL (co-founder), TechSpan/Headstrong (co-founder)
Arjun Malhotra is a pioneer of the Indian IT industry. He cofounded HCL, which catapulted the Indian IT sector to the global arena way back in the Licence Raj days of 1975. He was the public face of HCL and was considered the turnaround man for his ability to turn dead projects into extremely successful ones. Much of HCL's initial success was due to Arjun's brilliance in sales and marketing, in addition to his exemplary leadership skills.
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| Sridhar Mitta |
Dr Sridhar Mitta can be described as one of the heroes of Indian IT folklore but he has always kept a low profile. There hasn’t been a historic moment in the IT history of India where Dr Mitta hasn’t played a part. He joined Wipro Limited in 1980, becoming their first employee. Since then he has shepherded Wipro, making it synonymous with the success of Indian IT in the global market. During his tenure as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), he helped Wipro become one of the highest valued companies in India. After Wipro, he founded EnThink Inc.- a California based company and co-founded e4e Labs Pvt. Ltd. in 2000 to help budding entrepreneurs to find their feet at the global level. He also founded NextWealth Entrepreneurs Pvt. Ltd. to nurture social entrepreneurship in India.
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Arjun Malhotra: HCL (co-founder), TechSpan/Headstrong (co-founder)
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| Arjun Malhotra |
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Kiran Seth: SPIC MACAY (founder)
In an age of iPods, iPhones, and Web 2.0, if a professor at IIT refuses to own a cell phone and drives a Maruti 800, there is clearly something unique about him. Dr Kiran Seth, the founder of Society for Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth, popularly known as SPIC MACAY, has stuck to traditional values and has been leading a lonely crusade for over thirty-four years to save Indian virasat from the curse of oblivion.
SPIC MACAY is a non-profit, voluntary, apolitical, and participatory student movement. It aims to promote awareness among the youth about the classical arts, rituals, mythology, and philosophy that make up the multi-hued cultural tapestry of India. The movement is not restricted to India, and has reached out to many countries across the globe.
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Prabhakant Sinha: ZS Associates (Co-founder and Co-chairman)
Prabhakant Sinha represents the unique breed of people who convert their research activities into successful entrepreneurial ventures. A multifaceted person, he encompasses the roles of entrepreneur, teacher, author, and philanthropist.
His company, ZS Associates, is one of the world’s largest sales and marketing consulting firms. The company, headquartered in Evanston, US, operates from 20 offices across the world and employs more than 1700 professionals. It has serviced over 700 clients in seventy countries. It was named the seventh best consulting company to work for by Consulting Magazine in 2009. ZS also placed second in the 2011 Vault Rankings for Pharmaceutical and Health Care Consulting.
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Ranbir Singh Gupta: Sigma7 Design Group (Founder and Chairman)
While studying under the shade of trees in his village school, Ranbir Singh Gupta would take time out to draw scientific diagrams on the ground or on sand. He still draws diagrams, but now as a top-notch architect based in the US. His company, Sigma7 Design Group, specializes in strategic planning, design and project management of mission critical facilities for the global financial services, pharmaceutical and technology clients.
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| Kiran Seth |
SPIC MACAY is a non-profit, voluntary, apolitical, and participatory student movement. It aims to promote awareness among the youth about the classical arts, rituals, mythology, and philosophy that make up the multi-hued cultural tapestry of India. The movement is not restricted to India, and has reached out to many countries across the globe.
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Prabhakant Sinha: ZS Associates (Co-founder and Co-chairman)
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| Prabhakant Sinha |
His company, ZS Associates, is one of the world’s largest sales and marketing consulting firms. The company, headquartered in Evanston, US, operates from 20 offices across the world and employs more than 1700 professionals. It has serviced over 700 clients in seventy countries. It was named the seventh best consulting company to work for by Consulting Magazine in 2009. ZS also placed second in the 2011 Vault Rankings for Pharmaceutical and Health Care Consulting.
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Ranbir Singh Gupta: Sigma7 Design Group (Founder and Chairman)
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| Ranbir Singh Gupta |
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Bikram Dasgupta: Pertech Computers Ltd. (Co-founder), Globsyn (Founder and Chairman)
Bikram Dasgupta’s entrepreneurial journey has been that of a gambler’s. From the very beginning, he has made a mockery of conventional wisdom, and has always come out on top.
Bikram was one of the five co-founders of Pertech Computers Limited (PCL), which was at one point the largest PC manufacturer in India. He left PCL in 1995 to start Globsyn, which was single-handedly responsible for the IT industry set up in West Bengal and turning around the industrially deprived state’s fortunes.
His book Minds on Fire- An Infotech Entrepreneur’s Journey is studied at all the leading B-schools in India.
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Praful Kulkarni: gkkworks (Founder and CEO)
Praful M Kulkarni’s story is that of a village boy who, despite all odds, made it big in life. His company gkkworks provides planning, design, design-build, programme/construction management, and general construction services. gkkworks is ranked as a top construction management firm in the US by Engineering News Record.
The firm is listed among Zweig White’s top 100 fastest growing design firms Hall of Fame, having made it to the list for more than four years. The company has more than $200 million in revenue and 300 professionals located in the US and India, with headquarters at California.
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Sunil Gaitonde: GS Lab (Founder and CEO)
Sunil Gaitonde can be described as one of those people who were born to make spectacular breakthroughs in technology. Unlike the stereotypical geek, he puts his trust in people over ideas- a philosophy which he has applied to all his start ups.
Today, he is a serial technology entrepreneur who has founded three companies, two of which were acquired. The first of these was Internet Junction, which was acquired by Cisco, and the second, Sarvega, was acquired by Intel. He is currently the CEO of Great Software Laboratory, and is on the IIT Foundation board and a charter member of TiE.
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Anand Deshpande: Persistent Systems (Founder and Chairman)
Way back in 1990, when contemporary software companies opted to provide only services to rake in the moolah, Anand Deshpande dared to believe that software product development could not only be done from India, but would be the future of the Indian software industry. He made software product outsourcing an integral part of the business model for his company, Persistent Systems. It was a conviction that was amply justified in the years to come.
Headquartered at Pune, Persistent has a presence across three continents, with nine development centres in Europe, North America, and Asia. The company- a leader in outsourced software product development services- registered a revenue of over $ 170 million in 2010-11. It also won the NASSCOM Innovations Award in 2008.
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Arvind Kejriwal: India Against Corruption (Member)
This man in trousers and a shirt with a Reynolds pen in his shirt pocket, resembles a typical government clerk. He keeps a black moustache, travels by the Metro and has no qualms sleeping on the floor of railway platforms.
A former bureaucrat with the Indian Revenue Service, Arvind Kejriwal has already created a revolution with the Right to Information (RTI) movement in the country through his organization Parivartan. He is a key member of India Against Corruption, a citizen's movement that demands strong anti-corruption laws.
Rediff has published an excerpt from Arvind's story, please follow the link.
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Harish Hande: SELCO (Founder and Managing Director)
If you happen to be travelling through rural Karnataka, you’ll see households twinkling in an ocean of darkness. What you would’ve witnessed is the impact of Harish Hande, SELCO, and their solar lanterns.
Harish Hande founded SELCO in 1995, and for the past sixteen years it has been changing the face of rural Karnataka and parts of Gujarat by providing sustainable solar energy. In 2011, he was given the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award.
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Anuradha Acharya: Ocimum Biosolutions (Founder and CEO)
Anuradha Acharya built her company, Ocimum Biosolutions, in the year 2000, when the fields of biotechnology and bioinformatics were in their infancy. She was just 28 years old.
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| Bikram Dasgupta |
Bikram was one of the five co-founders of Pertech Computers Limited (PCL), which was at one point the largest PC manufacturer in India. He left PCL in 1995 to start Globsyn, which was single-handedly responsible for the IT industry set up in West Bengal and turning around the industrially deprived state’s fortunes.
His book Minds on Fire- An Infotech Entrepreneur’s Journey is studied at all the leading B-schools in India.
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Praful Kulkarni: gkkworks (Founder and CEO)
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| Praful Kulkarni |
The firm is listed among Zweig White’s top 100 fastest growing design firms Hall of Fame, having made it to the list for more than four years. The company has more than $200 million in revenue and 300 professionals located in the US and India, with headquarters at California.
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Sunil Gaitonde: GS Lab (Founder and CEO)
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| Sunil Gaitonde |
Today, he is a serial technology entrepreneur who has founded three companies, two of which were acquired. The first of these was Internet Junction, which was acquired by Cisco, and the second, Sarvega, was acquired by Intel. He is currently the CEO of Great Software Laboratory, and is on the IIT Foundation board and a charter member of TiE.
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Anand Deshpande: Persistent Systems (Founder and Chairman)
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| Anand Deshpande |
Headquartered at Pune, Persistent has a presence across three continents, with nine development centres in Europe, North America, and Asia. The company- a leader in outsourced software product development services- registered a revenue of over $ 170 million in 2010-11. It also won the NASSCOM Innovations Award in 2008.
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Arvind Kejriwal: India Against Corruption (Member)
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| Arvind Kejriwal |
A former bureaucrat with the Indian Revenue Service, Arvind Kejriwal has already created a revolution with the Right to Information (RTI) movement in the country through his organization Parivartan. He is a key member of India Against Corruption, a citizen's movement that demands strong anti-corruption laws.
Rediff has published an excerpt from Arvind's story, please follow the link.
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Harish Hande: SELCO (Founder and Managing Director)
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| Harish Hande |
Harish Hande founded SELCO in 1995, and for the past sixteen years it has been changing the face of rural Karnataka and parts of Gujarat by providing sustainable solar energy. In 2011, he was given the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award.
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Anuradha Acharya: Ocimum Biosolutions (Founder and CEO)
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| Anuradha Acharya |
Ocimum, a leading integrated global genomics company, counts the majority of the top 25 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and leading research institutes worldwide among its clients.
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Venkata Subramanian: eFarm (Founder and Managing Director)
eFarm, as Venkata Subramanian himself describes it, is ‘Wal-Mart+eBay+dabbawallah’ for the agriculture industry all processed and packaged into one business.
eFarm aims at providing the much-needed stability in a sector which is otherwise backward in terms of technology, and volatile for everyone involved in the chain. It gives the destitute farmer a glimmer of a hope of becoming self-sufficient, and not merely depending on government subsidies and loan waivers for survival.
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Bikash Barai: iViz TechnoSolutions (Co-founder and CEO)
Bikash teamed up with fellow batch mate, Nilanjan De, to create iViz TechnoSolutions in the year 2005. At iViz, Bikash and Nilanjan developed a revolutionary technology capable of determining threats in a computer network. The tool finds all possible paths through which a computer can be attacked and comes up with viable solutions for the same.
Since then iViz has cemented its place in the global market as one of the most reputed computer network security companies.
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Vikram Kumar: Dataresolve Technologies (Founder and CEO)
Ever since Vikram’s third year at IIT, he wanted to create a technology that would transform the world. What differentiated him from the most of the other IITians who have similar dreams was the fact that he believed in them. The power of his belief gave him the tenacity and determination required to establish a successful venture from scratch.
Dataresolve is one of those Indian IT companies which is gradually changing the global perception of the Indian IT industry- a hotbed for ground-breaking technologies.
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Krishna Mehra: Capillary Technologies (Co-founder and CTO)
What happens when a smart mind meets smart business acumen? The result is Krishna Mehra. Krishna heads Capillary Technologies, a company which, in the words of the high profile investor and head of Google India Rajan Anandan, ‘will become one of India’s most valuable technology companies over the coming years’. This, about a company barely three years old.
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Venkata Subramanian: eFarm (Founder and Managing Director)
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| Venkata Subramanian |
eFarm aims at providing the much-needed stability in a sector which is otherwise backward in terms of technology, and volatile for everyone involved in the chain. It gives the destitute farmer a glimmer of a hope of becoming self-sufficient, and not merely depending on government subsidies and loan waivers for survival.
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Bikash Barai: iViz TechnoSolutions (Co-founder and CEO)
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| Bikash Barai |
Since then iViz has cemented its place in the global market as one of the most reputed computer network security companies.
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Vikram Kumar: Dataresolve Technologies (Founder and CEO)
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| Vikram Kumar |
Dataresolve is one of those Indian IT companies which is gradually changing the global perception of the Indian IT industry- a hotbed for ground-breaking technologies.
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Krishna Mehra: Capillary Technologies (Co-founder and CTO)
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| Krishna Mehra |
