7 Indians Who Made It Big In The US

Indian immigrants are a significant driving force behind the creation of new engineering and technology companies in the United States in the past decade.A study says that of the estimated 7,300 US tech startups founded by immigrants, 26 per cent have Indian founders, CEOs, presidents or head researchers.Many talented Indians have made breakthroughs, pushed boundaries and held positions of power in the world of technology and media.Almost every big US technology companies have technology pioneers of Indian descent, including the fathers of the USB and technology blogging.  Here are few Indians breaking good in USA.

1) Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft

After a search spanning almost six months, software giant Microsoft appointed India-born Satya Nadella as CEO. A 22-year Microsoft veteran, Nadella takes charge from Steve Ballmer, who announced his retirement last year.  Satya Nadella was born in 1967 in Hyderabad and completed his schooling from Hyderabad Public School and went to study electronics and communication engineering at Manipal University. After graduating in 1988, he moved to the US to pursue his master’s in computer science from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He also holds an MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

2) Sabeer Bhatia, Co-founder Hotmail

Sabeer Bhatia is an Indian entrepreneur who founded the Hotmail email service which was bought by Microsoft at whooping $400mn back then.

Sabeer Bhatia grew up in Bangalore and had his early education at the Bishop’s School in Pune and then at St Joseph’s Boys High School in Bangalore.In 1988,he went US to get a bachelor degree at the California Institute of Technology after a foreign transfer from BITS Pilani, Rajasthan. He earned a master degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

In 1999, Bhatia then left Microsoft and founded an e-commerce firm, Arzoo Inc, before starting a free messaging service called JaxtrSMS.

3) Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai or P Sundarajan is an Indian American computer engineer from Tamil Nadu. He graduated with metallurgical and materials engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1993. There he not only topped in his subject, but also won the Institute Silver Medal for excellence in academics.

Afterward, Pichai completed his Masters Degree in Engineering and Materials Science from the Stanford University in the U.S. and then also did his Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business.

Pichai joined Google in 2004 as Vice President of product management to take care of the search and consumer products such as iGoogle, Google Toolbar, Desktop Search and Gadgets, Google Pack, and Gears. In 2011, he became senior vice president of Google Chrome and Apps, which includes the Chrome browser and operating system, Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Drive. The engineer made the Chrome browser a huge success surpassing Internet Explorer and Firefox.

4) Vinod Khosla

Khosla was Born in 1955 in Delhi, India. Khosla was inspired into a career in technology by reading about the founding of Intel in 1968 at the age of 14. He gained a degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi before moving to the US to obtain a masters in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a masters from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1980. 

In 1980, Khosla joined electronic design automation company Daisy Systems before leaving in 1982 to co-found Sun Microsystems along with Stanford alumni Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, as well as Bill Joy. Khosla served as Sun’s chief executive until 1984.

Khosla then joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm, as a general partner in 1987 investing in technology firms and Indian finance companies. Khosla then left the company in 2004 to start his own venture capitalist firm, Khosla Ventures, which manages around $1bn of investment capital and invests in clean technology and information technology startups.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair joined Khosla Ventures in 2010, advising on environment-focused investments.

5) Ajay Bhatt

Ajay V. Bhatt is an Indian-American computer architect who helped define and develop several widely used technologies, including USB (Universal Serial Bus), AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), PCI Express, Platform Power management architecture and various chipset improvements.Ajay Bhatt rose to global celebrity as the co-inventor of USB through an Intel 2009 TV advertisement, where he was portrayed by actor Sunil Narkar.

After completing his graduation from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India, Bhatt received his master’s degree from The City University of New York, United States. Bhatt joined Intel corporation in 1990 as a senior staff architect on the chipset architecture team in Folsom. He holds thirty-one U.S. patents, and several others are in various stages of filing. In 1998, 2003 and 2004, Bhatt was nominated to take part in a Distinguished Lecture Series at leading universities in the United States and Asia. He received an Achievement in Excellence Award for his contribution in PCI Express specification development in 2002.

Intel’s Chief I/O architect responsible for the platform and I/O interconnects directions, Bhatt also leads definition and development of the next-generation Client Platform architecture.

Intel Fellows are selected for their technical leadership and outstanding contributions to the company and the industry.

On October 9, 2009, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien did a comedy sketch featuring him that parodied Intel’s “Rockstar” commercials.Ajay Bhatt was featured in July 2010 issue of GQ India, as one of “The 50 Most Influential Global Indians!”.

6) Padmasree Warrior

Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology officer, worked for Motorola for 23 years. Born in 1961 in Vijayawada, India, Padmasree Warrior gained a degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in 1982 before moving to the US and graduating from Cornell University with a masters in chemical engineering.

From Cornell Warrior started her 23-year-career with Motorola in 1984. Starting out as only one of a few women at the company’s Arizona facility, she rose through the ranks. Warrior served as general manager of Motorola’s Energy Systems Group, as well as chief technology officer of its Semiconductor Products department and general manager of Thoughtbeam before it was shut down.

In 2003, Warrior became a senior vice president and Motorola’s chief technology officer, before being promoted to executive vice president in 2005. Under her tenure, Motorola won the National Medal of Technology from the President of the United States for the first time in 2004.

Warrior remained chief technology officer at Motorola until 2007, where she left to take over the same role at Cisco Systems, which she holds to this day.

7) Shantanu Narayen

Shantanu Narayen is the CEO of Adobe Systems. Prior to this post, he held the role as the President and Chief Operating Officer since 2005. He is also the President of the board of the Adobe Foundation.

He grew up in Hyderabad, India, the second son of a mother who taught American literature and a father who ran a plastics company.He went to Hyderabad Public School in Hyderabad. Narayen holds a Bachelor of Science in electronics engineeringfrom Osmania University in India, a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Science in computer science from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.On May 7, 2011, Narayen received an honorary Doctor of Applied Science degree from his alma mater, Bowling Green State University.

Narayen started his computer graphics career at Apple before moving to Silicon Graphics to be its director of desktop collaboration products. He then left Silicon Graphics to co-found the pioneer of digital photo sharing over the internet, Pictra Inc.In 1998 Narayen started his 16-year career at Adobe, joining the company as vice president of worldwide product research. He was later promoted to executive vice president before becoming chief operating officer of the company in 2005 at the age of 41. Narayen was one of the driving forces behind Adobe’s $3.4bn acquisition of multi-media company Macromedia in 2005 before being appointed chief executive of Adobe in 2007.President Barack Obama recognised Narayen in 2011 by appointing him as a member of the new Management Advisory Board, which was established by an Executive Order in 2010 to advise on how to implement the best technology practices within the government.

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