August - 2000 - issue > Cover

Although Indians started coming to the United States as early as 1790, they only attained significant numbers toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the 1900 US census counted 2,050 East Indians. The earliest immigrants were not engineers, but unskilled laborers who took up farming and other low-paying jobs.

Dalip Singh Saund, who came to the United States in 1920, was among the earliest Indians to pursue higher studies in the US. He was admitted to the University of California at Berkeley where he received M.A. and Ph. D. degrees in mathematics. Although Saund, a Sikh, could have pursued a number of careers, he chose to be first a farmer and later a political rights activist. He also ran for political office and was elected to the Congress for three terms.

Nevertheless, Indians contributed to the Silicon Valley lore rather early in its history. In fact, they were there before Silicon Valley stories became lore, and years before the region even came to be called Silicon Valley. Another modern-day entrepreneur who came to the valley in the 1960s is Mihir Parikh, the founder of Asyst Technologies. “Thirty-five years ago, Indians were not just a minority — but an invisible one,” he says. At the age of 18, Parikh came to study at the University of California, Berkeley and ventured to start a company 18 years later, mainly because he wanted to be a scientist. Entrepreneurship was something he and most of his genre of Indians never considered seriously until much later.

Narinder Singh Kapany, who studied in England and earned a reputation for pioneering work in fiber optics, is among the earliest Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The young Kapany, growing up in Dehradun, was fascinated by physics — in particular, light. When his teacher at Mission School told him that light could travel only in a straight line, he was challenged. He says he didn’t exactly rebel, but remained skeptical. Rightly so, because in the mid-nineteenth century, Swiss physicist Daniel Collodon and French physicist Jacques Babinet had already demonstrated that light could be guided along jets of water.

Nevertheless, pursuing what was still unknown to Kapany became a life goal. He went on to study physics at Agra University and later advanced studies in optics at the Imperial College of Science and technology in London. In 1954, Kapany reported in the British journal Nature the successful transmission of images through fiber optical bundles, transparent rods of glass or plastic.

Soon after receiving his Ph.D. in 1955, Kapany came to the United States to teach at the University of Rochester. In 1960, he moved to Palo Alto. The same year he founded Optics Technology, which developed fiber optics for medical and other uses. There were few Indians in high-tech at that time. At the time, Kapany knew just one: Salaam Qureshi, a software programmer.

Kapany says he relished all the challenges of coming to Silicon Valley and building a company in an era when mentoring, among other things, was nonexistent. In the 1960s, Silicon Valley was “pretty much a lilywhite place,” according to John McLaughlin, publisher of an authoritative history of the Silicon Valley who came to live in Palo Alto when he was an impressionable teenager.

However, even those days had their venture capitalists. Kapany received funding from the firm of Draper Gaither Anderson. After seven years in business, Optics Technology made an initial public offering. Its shares, sold at $12 per share, traded on the opening day at $30, reflecting a gain of 150 percent; six months later, they were being traded for $30, Kapany said.

Even though Kapany had had his day, Fortune magazine lumped him with the “unsung heroes” in an article last year, citing only his achievements in fiber optics. “I think it is better than being a hero because then you are not a target,” he says. “It doesn’t bother me.” Kapany, now 70 and into his third startup (K2Optronics), looks paternally on the Indians who have achieved great success and visibility in the Valley.

“The Indian successes here prove beyond a doubt that we don’t take a back seat to anybody. It shows the power of our talent,” he says. Almost in the same breath, Kapany questions the conditions in India where the same talent has not met with the comparable levels of success. “I am not sure [the talent] has worked in India. There must be something wrong [in India],” he says.

After Kapany’s first venture, the next bout of Indian entrepreneurship in the valley came only in the 1980s, but came in bold fashion and at a steady trickle. The spirit of entrepreneurship had changed.

In 1980, Vinod Khosla, a young Stanford graduate fresh out of business school, spurned job opportunities to start Daisy Systems, a CAE (computer-aided engineering) company; Narendra Gupta started Integrated Systems, an embedded software maker, “for the fun of it” and “to be your own boss.” Although Khosla failed the first time, he was not disheartened. If anything, he was even hungrier for success, vowing to become a millionaire before the age of 30. Khosla ventured to start Sun Microsystems, and laid out ambitious plans for creating “open” desktop computing.

The same year, in 1982, Kanwal Rekhi, now the voice of Silicon Valley Indian entrepreneurs, ended his job search, secure in his belief that he had to fashion his own future. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Rekhi came to the US in 1967 to study at the University of Michigan. During his student days he washed dishes; once he graduated, he was laid off from three jobs. In 1971, he came to Silicon Valley to work for Singer-Link. After over a decade, he and two colleagues at chipmaker Zilog started Excelan, a networking company.

Two years later, Suhas Patil, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a budding entrepreneur, moved to the Valley. He had already started Patil Systems in Utah, but moved to the Valley to find resources and partners to develop it further. He succeeded in finding the right partner, Mike Hackworth. Cirrus Logic, as the company was renamed, rose to become a celebrated Valley company.

Even more importantly, the arrival of Patil put in place a triumvirate that has probably done the most for Indian entrepreneurship in the Valley. Khosla, Rekhi and Patil, all graduates of the prestigious IITs, not only fashioned their own successes but also have played a major role in the development of many other Indian entrepreneurs, notably through the establishment in 1992 of The Indus Entrepreneurs.