South Asian Silicon Valley group shares its success mantra

Washington, March 8: A group of successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with roots in South Asia is now teaching its own success mantra to foster entrepreneurship globally through mentoring, networking, educating, incubating, and funding.

Called The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), the group was co-founded in 1992 by Sanjay Govil, an Indian-American business executive who seven years later using just $1,000 founded his own IT service company that today earns $200 million in yearly revenue. “TiE works by directly connecting entrepreneurs with leaders in their desired field,” Govil told in an email interview explaining the working of the group with 13,000 members, including over 2,500 charter members in 61 chapters across 18 countries. “Whether it’s finding a mentor, others in the same business space, or bringing together people of similar interests, TiE establishes mutually beneficial relationships that help entrepreneurs better reach their goals,” he said.

Govil, who is based in Washington DC, said Infinite Computer Solutions, the company he founded in 1999, works with the US branch of TiE and is very involved in its The Young Entrepreneurs Programme (TyE). Since 2012, TyE Programme’s entrepreneurship bootcamp and business plan competition in the US capital has been sponsored by Infinite. “TyE offers students an opportunity to explore what it takes to build a business, and learn directly from successful entrepreneurs,” he said. “We got involved in the programme to give future entrepreneurs a head-start in high school.”

TyE gets over 100 applications for entry into the programme. Participants enter business plan competitions, file patents, and even build their own ongoing business, Govil said. “It offers students an opportunity to explore what it takes to build a successful company.” As part of corporate social responsibility, Infinite’s Employee Club iVerve has chosen Parikrma, a Bangalore based non-profit organisation providing English language education to the poorest from the city slums, to sponsor as their charitable cause. “Our team has adopted a class room for which they pick up all expenses, including clothing, books, food and other living expenses,” Govil said. “It is our team’s way of ensuring that the dream of education can be made real for even those who are deeply impoverished.”

Govil said he started Infinite to provide powerful, customer-focused and customised IT solutions instead of customers picking through solutions that did not entirely meet their needs. “The key to my success has been the ability to make strong connections with people, which has led directly to Infinite’s success,” he said. “Our goal as a company has always been continuous communication with our shareholders, customers and employees.”

Govil said Infinite’s USP includes its agility and ability to evolve to the market, as well as its partnership approach to its clients. “We also differentiate ourselves with our offerings. Our tech solutions provide powerful, vertical-specific, proprietary frameworks that are then customised, allowing an overall faster time-to-market than other IT solutions. This is what we call ‘platformisation’,” he said.

On his future plans, Govil said they want to continue building out platformised solutions for health care, telecom, media and Banking. “We want our solutions in health care, for example, to be leveraged as a complete health care ecosystem, expanding outside hospital walls to patient homes, using the same technology in Fitbits to connect patients and doctors,” he said. (IANS)