Gururaj Deshpande

The Indian American VC and Entrepreneur, best known for co-founding Sycamore Networks, internet equipment manufacturer, Gururaj Deshpande is a versatile person. He presently heads as the Chairman of A123Systems, Sycamore Networks, Tejas Networks, HiveFire, Sandstone Capital, and Sparta Group.

But Sycamore is not the first venture of Desh, as he better prefers to be called. His first venture was Coral Networks, a router developer, which was founded in 1987. But, two years later due to differences with is partners, he sold the company for $15 million. Even the failure of Coral could not stop Desh from starting his second venture Cascade Communications.

Desh holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT-Madras, and PhD. in Data Communications from Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science at Queen’s University, Canada.