The history stands witness to the success of many a number of companies that were born in a garage. Perhaps that is the reason why Anupama Arya followed the tradition and started Mobera Systems in a garage in 2003 with six others. Their first product was an operating-room-of-the-future—operation room devices that connected a doctor sitting 5,000 miles away with the reports and pictures of the internals for the operation. Now seven years later, it is still like the early days, when each new product developed and launched brings envelops her in a state of euphoria. Today, Mobera Systems caters to global clients and has over 100 employees. “We do nerdy stuff, but it’s enjoyable. I love to play and experiment with technology products we develop,” she says.

Hailing from a humble family, Anupama moved to the U.S. to pursue an MS in Computer Science from the Arizona State University. Post her studies the next decade was an adventurous one. Soon after her Masters, she grabbed an opportunity to work in engineering, developing new communication products for the network infrastructure industry, SynOptics Communications (now Nortel Networks). Here she rolled out services like buying products on the web and unheard-of telecom services like voicemail and SMS. She also worked on software products that added to the IP internet backbone, over which new-age telecom and datacom services are delivered today.

“Experimenting with technologies that have not reached the market has always been a high for me,” she says. The pace of technological development was much faster in industry than that introduced as latest technical topics at the university level and Anupama often found she being invited by universities such as University of California at Berkeley, and San Jose State University to share her wealth of knowledge in advanced communication technologies. For her the experience was equally enriching.

Post SynOptics, she joined Lucent Technologies in ‘98. “I was in the systems and architecture group, putting together solutions for customers who were rolling out voice, video and data networks at a national level,” she explains. It was here that she started toying with the idea of launching her own company.

The idea was earlier discouraged by several friends and family who kept pointing out the risks of leaving in secured and comfortable job. But Anupam had faith in her dreams and with the backing of a Tier 1 Venture Capitalist and she founded Viv-exchange in 2000 with her husband. “We had complimentary skill sets. He had mastered sales and marketing, while I was involved in the engineering segment,” says she. After a successful run, the company was eventually acquired by a global Internet major but what she took forward was her entrepreneurial bug. Later she also founded another company that was a roll-up of technology services.