Natarajan Venkatakrishnan

NatrajanVenkatNatarajan Venkatakrishnan (Venkat) is the  Director of Research & Development for GE Appliances, since 2006. He also leads FirstBuild, an open source micro-manufacturing to create a new world of home appliances. He has more than 25 patent filings to date.

Based in Louisville, KY, US

Education:   B.Tech degree in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India.

Family: Wife Chitra, have two children.

Interests: running, marathon,

Other activities:

On the board of the Louisville Regional Science & Engineering Fair, Dupont Manual Science Fair and the Kentucky Statewide EPSCoR Committee.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=56130439

Kanwal Rekhi

001

Kanwal Rekhi is a Venture capitalist Angel investor and entrepreneur, currently serving as the managing director at Inventus Capital Partners.

Introduction:

  • Kanwal Rekhi is an Indian-American businessman.
  • He was borned during British-India in 1945 at Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan), after partition they settled in Kanpur, India.
  • Venture Capitalist Angel investor and Entrepreneur. Currently he is serving as M.D. at Inventus Capital Partners.
  • He is credited as the first Indo-American Founder & CEO to take a venture-backed company public on the NASDAQ.

Education:

  • He graduated in 1967 as an Electrical Engineer from (IIT) Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (now Mumbai).
  • He acquired his  Master of Science degree from Michigan Technological University.
  • Further he earned his honorary doctorates in both Business and Engineering from the Michigan Technological University.

Industry Profile:

  • Mr. Kanwal is experienced working in many position such as engineer, systems analyst, and manager before venturing in business.
  • In 1982, heco-founded Excelan in San Jose, California at the age of 36 & was named as president in 1985. The company went public in 1987 and merged with Novell in in 1989.
  • Kanwal served as an Executive Vice-President and the Chief Technology Officer of Novell until 1995.

Social and Philanthropy:

  • Kanwal Rekhi co-founded TiE in 1995 The Indus Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit support network to provide advice, contacts, and funding Indian owned startups in Silicon Valley and then spread to other countries including India.
  • He donated $3Million to IIT Mumbai to setup a new School of Information Technology which is now named after him: KReSIT – Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology.
  • He also contributed contributed $5 million to Michigan Tech in 2000 to increase the profile of educational institutions in India.

 

 

Raghuram Rajan

Raghuram Govinda Rajan

Raghuram Rajan is the current and the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Introduction:

  • Raghuram Rajan is born on 3rd february, 1963 in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.
  • He is a Tamil Brahmin & his father was a Senior Bureaucrat in Indian Government.
  • He is the current and the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, having taken charge of India’s central banking institution on 4 September 2013.
  • Rajan was chief economic adviser to India’s Ministry of Finance during the previous year and chief economist at the International Monetary Fund from 2003 to 2007.
  • He is on leave of absence as a professor of finance at the graduate business school at the University of Chicago.

Education:

  • He did his schooling from 7 grade to 12 grade in Delhi Public School, RK Puram.
  • He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1985.
  • He acquired a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1987.
  • He received a PhD in Management from the MIT in 1991 for his thesis titled “Essays on Banking”.

Industry Profile:

  • After graduation, He joined the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago as the Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from October 2003 to December 2006.
  • In November 2008, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh appointed Rajan as an honorary economic adviser.
  • Replacing Kaushik Basu, Rajan was appointed as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India on 10 August 2012.
  • In 2008, a high-level committee on financial reforms, headed by Rajan, submitted its final report to the Planning Commission.
  • He also prepared the Economic Survey for India for the year 2012-13, on 27 February.
  • On August 6, 2013 it was announced that Rajan would take over as the next RBI Governor.
  • He was appointed RBI Governor for a term of 3 years succeeding D Subbarao whose term ended on 4 September 2013.

Awards, Achievements & Recognitions:

  • In 2003, he won the Fischer Black Prize awarded by the American Finance Association for contributions to the theory and practice of finance by an economist under age 40.
  • He was awarded the fifth Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics 2013 on 26 September 2013 for his “ground-breaking research work which influenced financial and macro-economic policies around the world”.
  • Few awards received by him in his illustrious career as an academician and a researcher in financial economics are as follows –
    1. Center for Financial Studies Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics, 2013
    2. Infosys Prize for the Economic Sciences, 2012
    3. Global Indian of the Year Award, NASSCOM, 2011
    4. Bernhard Harms Prize awarded by the Kiel Institute for International Economics 2010
    5. Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award, 2010
    6. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2009.
    7. Jensen prize (runner-up) for paper in Journal of Financial Economics, 2006
    8. Fama/DFA prize for best paper in the Journal of Financial Economics, 2003
    9. Inaugural Fisher Black Prize awarded by the American Finance Association in January 2003
    10. Brattle Prize for distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance, 2002
    11. Brattle Prize for distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance, 2001
    12. Brattle Prize for distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance, 2000.
    13. Michael Brennan Award for the Best Paper published in the Review of Financial Studies,1997.
    14. Smith Breeden Prize awarded for best paper published in the Journal of Finance, 1994.
    15. Best Paper Award, Fifth Annual Small Firm Research Symposium, 1993.
    16. Smith Breeden Prize awarded for distinguished paper published in the Journal of Finance, 1992.
    17. Treffstz Prize for outstanding academic achievement, Western Finance Association, 1991.
    18. Gold Medal for academic performance, I.I.M (Ahmedabad), India, 1987.
    19. Director’s Gold Medal for all round performance in the class of 1985, I.I.T. (Delhi), 1985.

Social Life:

  • Raghuram is married to Radhika Puri, a classmate from IIM Ahmedabad. They have a son and a daughter.

LinkedIn Profile :

  • http://in.linkedin.com/pub/raghuram-rajan/46/366/846

Padmasree Warrior

Padmasree Warrior

Pasmasree Warrior is the former Chief Technology & Strategy Officer (CTO) of Cisco Systems, and the former CTO of Motorola, Inc.

Introduction:

  • Padmasree Warrior was born and raised in the city of Vijayawada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India.
  • She was born in to a Telugu family.
  • She is the CTO of Cisco Systems & the former CTO of Motorola, Inc.

Education:

  • She completed her schooling from Children’s Montessori School & Maris Stella College in Vijayawada.
  • Warrior received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1982.
  • She holds masters in chemical engineering from Cornell University.

Industry Profile:

  • Warrior joined Motorola in 1984, as one of only a few women in its Arizona facility. Over the course of her 23 years at the company, she served in a broad range of roles, including Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Motorola’s Energy Systems Group, and Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer in its Semiconductor Products Sector, which later became Freescale Semiconductor.
  • Prior to becoming Motorola’s CTO, she served as general manager of Thoughtbeam, a wholly owned Motorola subsidiary chartered to commercialize Motorola’s GaAs on silicon technology that was developed at the Physical Sciences Research Laboratory in Tempe, Arizona.
  • When named Motorola’s CTO in January 2003, Warrior became a senior vice president and in 2005 she was promoted to executive vice president.
  • During Warrior’s tenure as CTO, Motorola was awarded the 2004 National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States, the first time the company had received this honor.
  • On December 4, 2007, she left Motorola to become CTO at Cisco Systems.

Awards,Achievements & recognition:

  • Fortune Magazine called her one of four rising stars on its Most Powerful Women list, placing her between the 10 “highest paid” and the “Young and Powerful” categories.
  • In 2005, The Economic Times ranked Warrior as the 11th Most Influential Global Indian.
  • In 2001 she was one of six women nationwide selected to receive the “Women Elevating Science and Technology” award from Working Woman Magazine and her achievements were further recognized by American Immigration Law Foundation in 2003.
  • In 2004, she was conferred with the Distinguished Alumni Award by Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
  • During Warrior’s tenure as CTO, Motorola was awarded the 2004 National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush.
  • In 2007 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by New York’s Polytechnic University. Recently Awarded ASSOCHAM Ladies League, Hyderabad Women of the Decade Achievers Award for Excellence in Technology Innovation.

Arun Netravali

Arun N. Netravali

An Indian-American computer engineer.

Introduction:

  • Arun Netravali born on 26 May 1946 in Mumbai, India.
  • He is an Indian-American computer engineer who has contribution in digital technology includingHDTV.
  • He conducted seminal research in digital compression, signal processing and other fields.

Education:

  • He received his undergraduate degree from the IIT Bombay, India.
  • An M.S. and a Ph.D. from Rice University in Houston, Texas all in electrical engineering.

Industry Profile:

  • Netravali was the last President of Bell Laboratories .
  • Chief Scientist for Lucent Technologies before they went bankrupt.

Awards:

  • The IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal in 2001 (together with Thomas S. Huang)
  • The IEEE Frederik Philips Award in 2001
  • The U.S. National Medal of Technology
  • The Padma Bhushan from the Government of India
  • The IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1991 (together with C. Chapin Cutler and John O. Limb)
  • Elected to member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1989
  • Elected to IEEE Fellow in 1985
  • The IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award in 1982 (together with John O. Limb)

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai

P Sundarajan, better known as Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google.

Introduction:

  • Sundar Pichai was born in 1972 in Chennai.
  • He  earlier servied as Senior Vice President at Google, where he oversaw Android, Chrome and Google Apps.
  • “Pichai was the brightest of his batch & stood first in the department & went on to get the silver medal”, Says IIT Professor Sanat Kumar Roy.

Education:

  •  He received his Bachelors in Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and was awarded an Institute Silver Medal.
  • He holds an M.S. from Stanford University.
  • An MBA degree holder from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Siebel Scholar.

Industry Profile:

  • He worked in Applied Materials & McKinsey Co.
  • Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004.
  • Sundar Pichai  is responsible for the development of the Google browser as the company’s Senior Vice President of product development.
  • On May 20, 2010, he announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google, and introduced the new video format WebM.
  • He has been a director at Jive Software since April 2011.
  • In 2011, Pichai’s product innovation skills caught Twitter’s attention. But, Google reportedly paid $50 million to keep him back.
  • On 13th March, 2013 Google CEO Larry Page Handed over android development to  Sundar Pichai.

Personal Life:

  • He is married & has two daughters.

Prem Watsa

Prem Watsa

Founder, chairman, and chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings

Introduction:

  • (Born 1950 in Hyderabad, India) is the founder, chairman, and chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, based in Toronto, Ontario.
  • He has been called the “Canadian Warren Buffett” by some during successful periods of investing.

Education:

  1. Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet.
  2. IIT Chennai graduate in chemical engineering (1971).
  3. MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business of the University of Western Ontario.

Industry profile:

  1. Member of the Board of Trustees of the The Hospital for Sick Children.
  2. Member of the Advisory Board for the Richard Ivey School of Business.
  3. Member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation.
  4. Chairman of the Investment Committee of St. Paul’s Anglican Church.
  5. In June 2009, he was installed as the ninth chancellor of the University of Waterloo.
  6. On January 22, 2012, it was reported he was to be appointed to BlackBerry handset maker, Research In Motion Ltd.
  7. On September 23 2013, Blackberry announced that it had signed a letter of intent to be acquired by Prem Watsa led Fairfax Financial Holdings in a $4.7 Billion deal.
  8. Fairfax Financial Holdings, an insurance-cum-investment company that Watsa founded in 1985, went on to become Canada’s most profitable company in 2008.