Returning Indians

Vani Kola: Founder RightWorks, Certus Software

2006-09-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

In the News: http://www.vanikola.com/inthenews.html

Homepage: http://www.vanikola.com/

From USA TODAY Article:

Passage back to India

Kevin Maney

USA Today
August 23, 2006

Vani Kola, founder of two successful U.S. tech companies, is on the phone from Bangalore. She's looking outside at the night rain and wondering aloud how to explain how she ended up returning to the country of her birth.

"A year back, if anybody said I'd be in India, and bring my family, and be here for the long term, I would've given it zero probability," she says. "I would've bet a million dollars not."

But this is what happens when you get caught in a historic wave. One minute you're bobbing along, sipping a daiquiri and minding the jellyfish ... and the next you're washed up on a distant shore.

Kola, at 42, is part of a fascinating diaspora. A couple of decades ago, Indian émigrés poured into Silicon Valley and played a significant role in shaping it. Vinod Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems and invested in dozens of other start-ups. Gururaj Deshpande launched Juniper Networks. Suhas Patil started Cirrus Logic. The list is long. California estimates that the state is home to 3,000 companies owned by Indian entrepreneurs.

But now, Indians are going back. Many are younger folks who see an opportunity to become India's version of a Khosla or Deshpande.

They see burgeoning tech newbies such as Infosys and Wipro Technologies — both tech services companies in Bangalore — and think they can do better. They want to jump into the nation's booming, crazy, thrilling tech industry and take advantage of their knowledge of both India and the USA. Some hope to get rich. Others want to help their homeland. Most want to do both.

Probably none of the returnees has been as high-profile as Kola, and the fact that she's doing it probably says a lot about the level of talent that India is about to suck back out of Silicon Valley.

In the late-1990s, Kola founded RightWorks, which made software for procurement. She sold the company in 2000 in a deal that valued RightWorks at $1.2 billion.

I first met Kola about two years ago, when she was running her next company, Nth Orbit — later named Certus Software. Its products help companies comply with that financial-reporting headache called Sarbanes-Oxley.

Kola has an instantly infectious personality. She was in training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro (which she later did). She is one of the few CEOs I've met who prefers to work in an office decorated primarily with her children's artwork. Her ego, while great, is also capable of taking a back seat. After I interviewed her, she drove me to a bookstore so she could buy a copy of my book.

Certus is still going strong, but last year Kola and the board clashed and Kola left. "I was at a point in my life where I was thinking, what's next for me?" she says.

Kola already knew India well — or thought she did. She was born and reared there, getting her electrical engineering degree from Osmania University in Hyderabad. She moved to the USA at 20 to work in the tech industry and has since seen India through business eyes. Both RightWorks and Certus had offices and developers in India. Kola traveled there every 90 days or so, but she says she never looked at it as a place to live and work.

Along the way, Kola became friends with Vinod Dham. He had also left India for Silicon Valley. At Intel, Dham became a vice president and will forever be known as the "father of the Pentium processor." Dham put the idea into Kola's head about maybe moving back to India.

To see if she'd want to go, Kola spent a month in India. "I spent random time meeting entrepreneurs, going to companies, meeting random people," Kola says. "I'd be (out) until 1 a.m. talking to people."

As you can see, two words often used to describe Kola are "driven" and "focused."

"I came away feeling that I have to be part of this," she says, "if I can bring my knowledge and in some way play a small role in the global impact India is going to have. This moment in time comes, and you either take advantage of it or not."

She adds: "In the next decade, I see technology, innovation, global brands and internationally respected companies coming out of India. It's too interesting a possibility. I had to find a way to participate."

Kola decided to move her family to Bangalore, a city the Indian press has dubbed "Silicon Valley with potholes." Its infrastructure is abysmal, like a construction project that never ends. But it has the energy and hope of the San Francisco Bay Area circa 1980.

Kola faced one hurdle — or so she thought. They were in the form of two daughters, ages 13 and 8. "Talking to my husband about it was the easy part," she says. "Then I talked to the kids. If they fought me too much, I wasn't going to do it. It was shocking that they were excited about it. My (older) daughter said, 'This is a global economy, so we should go because it will look good on my Harvard application.' "

Apparently, those driven and focused DNA strands passed from mother to daughter.

Kola has been in Bangalore for four weeks. She's already hosted three guests from the USA who want to check out India. She sent me photos of her house, which, interestingly, looks like a very nice stucco house in Silicon Valley. Kola seems to have settled in for the long haul.

So there you have a microcosm: one individual's story of coming to America because it was the exciting place to be, and moving back to India because, she feels, it's now the exciting place to be.

It comes with a sinking feeling that Kola is indeed part of a wave. Americans have worried about immigrants coming here and taking their jobs. We've worried about U.S. jobs getting outsourced overseas. Rarely have we worried about losing special immigrants.

But here are the facts: Vani Kola came to the USA, created jobs, created wealth, created technology — and now has gone home to do the same elsewhere.

Shekar Kammula : National Award Winning Movie Director of Dollar Dreams, Anand, Godavari (Telugu)

2006-09-10T02:07:00.000-07:00

Profile of Shekar Kammula

Sekhar Kammula - a MS post graduate in computer science from USA - had come back to Hyderabad in 1999 when every graduate staying in SR Nagar-Kukatpally belt was desperately trying for work permits and visas to fly to USA. He joined Citicorp as a software professional and spent around 20 lakhs to make his first film 'Dollar Dreams' that fetched him the most coveted National Award in the best debutant director category. After a gap of 3 years, he is back with a bang to make a complete Telugu entertainer 'Anand' with 50% funding from National Film Development Counsel. Know more about Sekhar Kammula with whom every techie who want to enter film industry as director could associate with

I did my graduation in Mechanical Engineering at Osmania University, Hyderabad. Then I went to USA to do my MS in Computer Science at University of New Jersey. I am a hardcore movie buff watching all Chiranjeevi movies on the first show of the first day. But what made feel that I am capable of making films is that I could able to see things differently compared to others. I think I have a philosophical angle to my nature and the way I observe the things.

I spent so much time watching things and I am capable of seeing and analyzing things differently. Hence, I decided that I should enter the field of moviemaking at one point of time. I wanted to join a film institute in USA. But I did not have money. I decided that I would earn money and then join a film institute to hone my skills.

I do love the country USA absolutely. There is lot of scope to broaden yourself. I am not speaking about the power of dollar. One can make money anywhere and anytime. They have tremendous attitude. Whatever they like to do they would do it. They have completely different mindset. I always wanted to return to India because I am attached to parents and I love Hyderabad. So I set my priorities right. Do job. Earn money. Go to film school. And return to India.

I had a very simple life in USA so that I could save money. When I started saving money, I applied for a film school at Howard University. I wrote in the statement of purpose while applying for film school that I tend to think about the things which people tend to ignore when they try accomplishing the materialistic needs. And I love small things in life and enjoy watching the tender feelings exhibited by kids and thoroughly love the things showered by nature upon us. That's what seems to have impressed the Chairman of the film school. He called upon me immediately and offered me admission into institute. I wanted some financial assistance. But they made it clear that its not possible in any film training school. I was one of the best students in the class. When we made small films, there was no ego or hierarchy. We used to work collectively. I used to be the light man sometimes, cinematographer or editor while learning the direction of the film.

I did thesis in my final semester and I did my thesis on screenplay. I have chosen the subject of Anand as the basic story of my thesis screenplay.

Finally I got my MFA (Master in Fine Arts) degree. Its not a 6months course. It's a 3 years (60 credit course) master degree. I had two degrees in USA. One is MS in Computer Science and other one is MFA. After 5 years of stay in USA, I returned to India.

That was in 1999. There was a tremendous boom in software field. As everybody was going to USA to earn dollars, I returned to India to do a job in Citicorp. I slowly started meeting people related to film industry.

There was so much of exodus from Hyderabad to USA in 1999. My sister is a gynecologist. She told me a strange incident that happened in her hospital. A lady was requesting my sister to do a 4th month abortion to her because she would be going to USA a year later and she want her kid to be citizen of USA by giving birth to him/her in USA. I felt that it was heights of insanity. That incident really inspired me. And that's what they taught me in school. Chose the subject of your film from an inspiring incident. I did not think about budget. I did not think about marketing my film. I did not think about the total outcome.

At that point of time 'Hyderabad Blues' was released. That genre inspired me. I pooled up money from my savings and borrowing from my friends. We started a banner called 'Amigos Creations' (Amigos means friends in Spanish). We cast people who are new to film industry for the freshness. The characters in 'Dollar Dreams' speak in 3 languages (Hindi, English and Telugu). I registered the film as English film. At that time I was not aware that I would have got subsidy for the film if it were registered as Telugu language. By the time I completed 1st copy I spent around Rs. 16 lakhs. When I started marketing the film, the distributors were putting questions like 'who is the hero? Who is music director? Which language film is this? I was totally zapped, because I did not have any satisfactory answers for the questions posed by distributors. Still, I has tremendous confidence and guts to continue my mission.

Then I approached the management of Sangeet theater in Secunderabad and told him that my film is a film that people would love to watch in Sangeet theater. I asked him to have a preview show and buy it if he likes the film. But he is pucca commercial man. He said that he would rent theater at flat rate of Rs. 10,000/- per show and he was not interested in buying the film. I had to finally agree for it and I booked Sangeet theater for one show a day for 28 days. We used to go to all corporate houses and fore sell the tickets of the film. It ran for 4 weeks nonstop. Then 20th Century Fox people saw the film and agreed to release it nationwide. He asked me to dub the Telugu dialogues in English. Then we started spending money on other things. We got lots of visibility at national level. But the icing on the cake was National Award (Swarna Kamal) for the best debutant director. Since then things started rolling for me. I sold the satellite rights of the film. I have lots of rights unsold for Dollar Dreams. I am confident that one day I would be breaking even on that project. I lost around 4-5 lakhs on Dollar Dreams. But I am very much satisfied for all the things that happened because of Dollar Dreams.

After Dollar Dreams, I started meeting producers to tell stories. All of them wanted a storyline. When I told them storyline, they used to feel that its too simple. Then I used to give them bounded script of Anand. They used to read a few scenes and tell that its OK. But nobody came forward. Actually a script cannot be read in pieces. Just like you watch a film continuously in a theater for 2 and half hours, one had to read the script continuously from 1st page to last page at a stretch to understand the content and the underlying feelings completely.

I met somebody at one of the film festivals and he suggested the name of NFDC (National Film Development Counsel). I applied for NFDC. Earlier they used to give 100% funding. But most of the makers used to take 50-60 lakhs as funding and spend only 10 lakhs to produce inflated bills. Hence, they wanted to see some accountability from director as well. Hence they came forward to fund 50% of the project. I also liked that idea and I believe 'Anand' would start a new trend in Telugu film industry in terms of funding.

Vikram Akula - www.sksindia.com

2006-09-10T01:51:00.000-07:00

Vikram Akula

One of "TIME 100: People Who Shape Our World" for the year 2006 along with Nandan Nilkeni

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1186828,00.html

Visit his company website: http://www.sksindia.com

Ashish Kumar : Founder Tekriti Software

2006-09-09T18:13:00.000-07:00

Ashish Kumar : Founder Tekriti Software
Personal Page/ Blog: http://www.latestinindia.com/

Company Page: http://www.tekritisoftware.com/

Some interesting article:
Return to India - Opportunity or Payback?

The Purpose !

2006-09-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

The pupose of this blog is to link all the bloggers who have returned to India from abroad, after a few years of work or studies. I believe this is a good way to know exactly what they feel about coming back to India and the life after that !

I plan to link all such blogs in " Bloggers Who Returned to India " category on the right, till I figure out a better way to present it.

You can post any such blogs thourgh either comments for this blog or by email me at .. skirank<-at->gmail.com

Finally, this is blog is intended to be a supplementary resource to whatever we are doing at

http://www.return2india.org

Thank you for stopping by ! I will try to organize the content better in the near future !

Seshadri