India's silicon stars shine
Lisa Tsering (ET)
THE AIR was abuzz with collective energy and brain power at a gathering of more than 900 Indian American high-tech entrepreneurs and information technology professionals where the very best among them were awarded.
The Siliconindia Technology and Entrepreneurship Leadership Awards were presented at the Santa Clara Convention Centre as part of Siliconindia magazine?s two-day conference, highlighting the contributions of South Asians to the industry.
Honoured by the high-tech monthly for their "excellence and promise in the technology sector" were people like venture capitalist and entrepreneur Vinod Khosla; Cisco Systems vice president Jayshree Ullal; Healtheon cofounder Pavan Nigam and many others.
Before introducing Vinod Khosla, the evening's keynote speaker, Siliconindia editor Yogesh Sharma honoured Sam Pitroda, "the man who wired India." Pitroda, currently the chairman and CEO of WorldTel (http://www.world-tel.com/), served as first chairman of India's Telecom Commission and holds more than 50 worldwide patents.
"Look at these people talking about new ideas," said Pitroda. "It's a community I am so proud of. I came here in 1964 and I'm told today there are 200,000 (of us)."
Described as a person who had put his own signature on the multi billion dollar company Xerox was the first awardee, Anshoo Gupta. Gupta, whose life-long employment with Xerox is a Silicon Valley anomaly, joined the company as an electronics engineer in 1969. Today he is a corporate vice president and has worldwide responsibility for the company's production publishing and production printing systems.
Sharma next introduced Naveen Jain, founder of InfoSpace.com, as "a symbol of dynamism and go-get-it-done attitude and all that works on the Internet today." Jain?s company, a provider of private label solutions for web content and e-commerce, went public early this year and has a current market cap of $2.3 billion, although it operates in the red by nearly $10 million.
"We never had a business plan. Anybody who has the time to write up a business plan is probably the wrong person to run the company," Jain said to applause at the awards ceremony, stylishly compered by Sharan Gill, Miss India-USA 1999-2000.
Gill introduced Piyush Patel, chairman and CEO of Cabletron by saying, "We couldn?t decide whether to list this guy as a corporate leader or entrepreneur," as he has successfully straddled both worlds since his ethernet company, Yago Systems, was acquired by Cabletron, a struggling networking company. Patel heads Cabletron and has shouldered the challenges of bringing it back up to speed. "Don't get discouraged," he said. "Let your convictions, energy and passion guide you to success."
Jayshree Ullal was the only woman to be named a Siliconindia awardee. She is in charge of LAN switching in the Enterprise Line of Business for Cisco Systems and was previously vice president of marketing for Crescendo.
N R Narayana Murthy, next up for an award, is best known as the CEO of Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies, the first Indian company to be registered on an American stock exchange. India, he said, was moving towards a "destiny that will bring an end to poverty and diseases and will bring the best opportunity for health and education for every child in the country."
Gill introduced Vinod Khosla as "a winning combination of composure, strategy, aggression, determination and experience in the competitive world of today?s technology business." Khosla, a general partner with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, a leading venture capital firm, was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems.
"1981-91, $100 billion of wealth was created in new companies - companies started from scratch, not counting wealth created by existing companies such as IBM and HP and others that got into the PC business. That was the largest legal creation of wealth in human history," said Khosla. "Now, technology is the driver of business strategies," he said. "Those who don't understand that are at a huge competitive disadvantage."
Raj Jain, an inventor, entrepreneur and Ohio State University professor; Suresh Nihalani, chairman and CEO of Accelerated Networks and Jai Rawat, CEO and chief technical officer of Obongo.com and founder of Chabi.com, were some of the other awardees.
IANS |
