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!

Excerpts from The Business World.

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