April - 2000 - issue > Cover Feature

Age 44
Place of Birth Muktsar ((Faridkot), Punjab

Residence Phoenix, AX

Family Chandigarh

Came to the U.S. 1976

Education Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering

First job Component Design Engineer, Intel Corporation

Company started Turn-Around CEO for Microchip Technology

Year did an IPO 1993

Year became millionaire 1989

Favorite charity United Way

Lifetime goals Build a highly profitable billion-dollar annual sales company and a strong-performing team that continues to win.

Net worth Over $100 million

Philosophy of life Build success through honest means; do your best to make this world a better place.

Most inspired by No specific one, borrow good ideas from many

Most excited by A vacation on the beach (Kauai is my favorite).

Most expensive thing ever bought My current mansion

As chairman of Microchip Technology, Inc., Steve Sanghi presides over a company whose total market value exceeded $2 billion in 1998. The son of a judge in Punjab and Haryana in India, he received a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from the Punjab Engineering College in 1975, before he turned 20. The following year, he arrived in the United States, where he acquired a Masters degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

He jump-started his career with Intel Corp. in 1978, and by the time he was 31 years of age, he had become a senior executive for that company. Fueled by his drive, energy and vision, he continued to seek new challenges. In 1988, he joined WaterScale Integration, Inc. as a vice president, a job he left when, as he puts it, “I saw holes in the strategy early on but wasn’t able to convince management.”

A failed merger attempt between WaterScale and a small company called Microchip was a major turning point in Sanghi’s career. He was asked to join Microchip in 1990 as senior vice president of operations. Within six months of joining the company, Sanghi had added the titles of chief executive officer and chairman to his credentials.

He credits “setting goals, having ambition, working hard, building a team, and empowering it to get the job done and then sharing the rewards of success as broadly as possible” as the secrets of his success. This philosophy is the bedrock of Microchip Technology, according to close friends and associates. Jack Beedle, founder and former chief executive of In-Stat, Inc. and a former Microchip board member, said in a recent Electronic Buyer’s News Online article, “Steve takes care of the company and the shareholders, but he also takes care of the people who are there.”

Sanghi’s leadership has pushed Microchip Technology into posting 28 consecutive profitable quarters. The company had one of the most successful initial public offerings in 1993. From that auspicious beginning to the end of the fiscal year, March 31, 1999, the company’s revenues increased from $89 million to $397 million.

In his meager spare time, Sanghi enjoys boating, water skiing, snow skiing, scuba diving, hiking, exercising and investing, but he classifies most of these as vacation-time hobbies.