48 year old Gururaj Deshpande, an IIT Chennai graduate
is today the second richest Indian, worth $ 3.7 billion at
the current market value. Mr Deshpande is the chairman of
Sycamore Networks, headquartered at Boston. Sycamore,
which is just over two years old, rather unbelievably, has
just two customers and three products. They are into manufacturing
Fibre Optic Cables, which will tackle the growing demand
for bandwidth, which is actually the future of the Internet.
Deshpande cofounded the company Sycamore in February 1998
with two other MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy)
scientists. He feels one has to be slightly crazy to be an
entrepreneur and points out, "I started with a simple concept,
just as oil was the most important commodity in the past 25
years, bandwidth will be the most important commodity for
the next 25 years." Deshpande also strongly believes
that "Hire people you trust, fire those you don't and don't
be wimpy about that," and adds "throw out ideas and encourage
people to take their own decisions." Sycamore
has already set a record for the largest dollar gain in the
history of the United States financial market, with the scrip
price opening at $ 38 and closing at $ 270. Though it has
just over 200 people working for them, it competes with giants
such as Lucent and Nortel, who have a staff
strength of more than 200,000. They are also quite excited
about the possibility of bringing 'Internet Bandwidth Technology'
to India.
Mr Deshpande is a soft-spoken Kannadiga, who holds a
doctorate in Data-Communications from Queen's University,
Canada. He is a down-to-earth family man from Hubli and is
married to Jaishree - a fellow IIT graduate. Incidentally,
she also happens to be the sister of Sudha Murthy,
wife of Narayana Murthy, Chairman Infosys Technologies
Ltd. The Deshpandes are a family of four, with two children,
both boys. Gururaj Deshpande also has immense regard for his
father-in-law, who has raised four children, and they have
topped any exam they ever took.
The only other contender for the crown of the richest Indian
is Azim Premji of Wipro, who also happens to
be from Namma Bengaluru.Incidentally
Sycamore is actually the name of a maple tree found in Massachusetts
and these trees are supposed to have a life of 600 years.
So, here's wishing Sycamore a life of 600 years and more!