By Ravi Namboori
India’s contribution to the Silicon Valley cannot be understated, given the fact that so many pioneers and thought leaders of information technology (IT) trace their origin to this Asian country.
The first person of Indian origin (PIO) to leave his footprint on this sector was Vinod Dham, referred to as the man behind the Intel Pentium processor.
His success was followed by that of Sabeer Bhatia who founded the famous email service, Hotmail, of Microsoft.
This was, however, way back. Even until the late 1990s, the number of Indians working in the IT sector in the US was not substantial enough. All that changed with the Y2K glitch and other positive developments in favor of India, which brought them to the United States in hordes.
A survey conducted by Stanford Law School and Saxenian in 2007 found that among the immigrants, Indians floated the largest number of technology start-ups in the US.
A report by the Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University found that barring Apple, Indians occupied senior positions in all IT firms. It has been found that 33% of employees of the technology behemoth Microsoft are Indians!
2014 was a watershed year as Microsoft appointed their first overseas CEO, who was a PIO by the name Satya Nadella.
Prior to that, Shantanu Narayen, another man who emigrated from India, was made the CEO of Adobe. Meanwhile, Sundar Pichai is the senior vice president, Google, the Chrome and apps division, among others.
There are many other PIOs who hold key positions in top companies.
Besides all of this, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, among others, have their development centers in India. All of these developments were largely possible because of the large English speaking talent in that country. This is where it scores over China and European countries, barring the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In addition, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm in terms of market valuation, is reportedly the third largest employer in this sector in the world, with a strength of 300,000! Forbes magazine had ranked this particular company 40th worldwide in its most innovative companies list for the year 2013.
Bengaluru (Bangalore), India’s IT hub, witnesses so much technological activity that it has earned it the sobriquet the ‘Silicon Valley of India’. The other major IT centers in India are in cities, such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, etc.
This article by Ravi Namboori, a Cisco evangelist, discusses the major contributions made by India and its non-resident population, residing in the USA, to the field of information technology. Although initially minor, they have now made IT field what it is today. http://ravinamboori.in/
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