San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
IIT Kharagpur Alumni organized another successful Professional Forum in the SF Bay Area. Initiated in year 2000 the purpose of the Professional Forum is to enable professional networking, development and excellence. The Forum was held on Saturday, June 16th at the historic HP building in Palo Alto where Hewlett and Packard started their company. This was the first time that the Forum was co-sponsored by two companies - speeDev and Virata. This was also the first time that IIT Kharagpur merchandise was available for purchase. There were approximately 55 attendees, mostly Kgp'ites.The meeting announcement can be found here.
Key Note Speaker:
Manpreet Khaira (88, CS, LLR) Founder and CEO of Mobilian and the Key Note Speaker enthralled the audience with his informative and insightful narration of his exciting and successful journey in starting Mobilian and the wireless data networking business. Manpreet, after a highly successful career at Intel, decided that he wanted to do something on his own. He filled his perceived knowledge gaps by getting customized training from Harvard Business School. He has pulled together an incredibly talented executive team from Qualcomm, Dell, Intel and the VC world. They, like many other start-ups, changed their focus after some time -- changing from an initial business focus on developing an appliance that would connect all digital devices to currently developing a WPAN, WLAN and WWAN chip solution. Manpreet, PGM in his batch, mentioned how he has applied his lessons learned as Mess Secretary in LLR Hall at Mobilian. Mobilian has thus far raised approximately $80 million in private financing and has 125 employees. Mobilian has offices in Portland, San Diego and Israel. They are looking for RF Engineers.For more information about Mobilian, please visit http://www.mobilian.com .
IIT Foundation Update:
Arvind Jain (69, Mech, AH), President of IIT Foundation, gave an overview of the IIT Foundation and IIT Kharagpur Golden Jubilee Partnership. IIT Foundation has generated tremendous momentum in the past year with the initiation of world class VLSI Lab and Computer Networking programs. Arvind urged the alumni to open their hearts and cheque books to invest in IIT Kharagpur.The slide can be found here .
A contribution form can be found online at http://www.iitfoundation.org/june/donor_form .
Shailendra Kumar (87, Mech, RK), Chairman of the Professional Forum and IIT Foundation Board member, then talked about the Golden Jubilee celebrations being planned for the alumni at IIT Kharagpur and discussed the Contribution Form (attached). For more information please visit http://www.iitfoundation.org.
Leaders and Innovators Platform:
This platform has been designed specifically for companies founded or led by IIT Kharagpur alumni to discuss their story, ideas and their company.Sky Basu (84, Mech, PH), CEO of speeDev and co-sponsor of the Forum gave a high-level overview of his company. speeDEV is a collaboration center for software development. It is designed to allow all participants in a software project to participate and exchange information about the project. Based on the project manager's definition of the development process, speeDEV moves the project along in a collaborative fashion without constant supervision. They are looking for potential partners. For more information please visit http://www.speedev.com .
Debu Pal (80, ECE, RP), VP Physical Layer Technology Development at Virata and co-sponsor of the Forum discussed his background and the company. Debu was the founder and CTO of Excess Bandwidth that was acquired by Virata for $315 million in August 2000. Founded in 1993, Virata Corporation currently provides Communications Software and semiconductors to manufacturers of DSL, wireless and other Broadband networking equipment. For more information please visit http://www.virata.com .
Networking Session:
The networking session was as usual intense and for over an hour. The volunteers had to shut the lights off to get the junta to leave the building. IIT merchandise - T-shirts, beer mugs, coasters, hats, all with Kgp logo were available for purchase. The T-shirts were a popular item.
About The Professional Forum:
Initiated in year 2000 Professional Forum is an event hosted by IIT Kharagpur's Global Alumni Network for its alumni and friends of IIT Kharagpur. The purpose of the event is to enable professional networking, development and excellence. Please give your feedback, suggestions to make the Forum more valuable to you.
The Forum Team includes:
Shailendra Kumar (87, Mech, RK)
Pran Kurup (89, EE, NH)
Joyjit Nath (87, ECE, RK)
Ramesh Padala (96, EE , PH)
Jagmohan Rajpal (94, ECE, PH)
Ronnie Ray (91, Mech, RP)
Sounak Sinha (96, EE, LLR)
Ravi Venkatesan (92, Arch, RP)
An archive of past events can be found at http://www.kgpnet.org/sfbay/ .