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Microsoft Ver. 3.0
If the man pictured alongside passed you by on a street, you'd probably dismiss him for a middle-level bureaucrat. William Henry Gates III (aka Bill Gates), billionaire-founder of Microsoft, would have you know that you are dead wrong. For, as the Vice President of Windows Engineering and Services Group, the Chennai-bred Sivaramakichenane Somasegar (better known as Soma) has just helped Microsoft make its biggest product launch ever-the Windows XP-to rave reviews. The Redmond-based software major will spend about $100 million in promoting the new all-in-one operating system, which the forty-something and his army of 5,000-odd engineers developed over the last two years. Soma, an electronics engineer from the Louisiana State University, is also in charge of Microsoft's R&D centre in Hyderabad that is working on projects "of strategic importance to (the company's) product development plans.''
In fact, Gates must be turning into something of an Indophile. He's got two more top Indian executives handling key parts of Microsoft's future strategy. Sanjay Parthasarathy (below) is responsible for the company's .net platform strategy (involving software subscription). The 36-year-old-who is a scion of the Chennai-based TVS family, besides having been a first-class cricket player-joined Microsoft in 1990 and has handled a number of roles, most recent being the general manager for worldwide customer systems, which includes responsibility for www.microsoft.com-the world's fourth-largest website. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad (he has master's degrees in engineering and business), Parthasarathy is Microsoft's lead evangelist of the .net platform to software developers. The other Indian vice president at Redmond, Amar Nehru, isn't a software engineer. Rather, Nehru is a marketer-with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management-in charge of Corporate Development, focusing on emerging market opportunities, and M&A and joint venture negotiations. Given that the software giant has $3.92 billion in cash and cash equivalents, Nehru must have potential partners and small companies hanging on to his every word. Prior to joining Microsoft, Nehru was with P&G in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tech may be down, but Indian techies certainly aren't. By Design
Did you know that your Van Heusen, Louis Philippe, and even San Frisco and Peter England garments are designed by the man who also clothes pop stars such as Madonna, Mick Jagger, Elton John and Paul McCartney? But that's not the only reason why Madura Garments hired Stephen King as a design consultant in 1999. King, the garment-maker's well-kept secret in Bangalore, took to fashion designing as a hobby when he was barely eight and finds dressing up the average, but sartorially inclined, people more interesting. In the 30 years of professional career, King has done zany things like help a friend blow up $3 million (Rs 14.10 crore) on just the interiors of a two-bedroom apartment in Switzerland. ''A good designer can design anything,'' is the way he sees it. Better believe him. He did clothe Elton John didn't he? Master Plan
He flagged off Dilip Chhabria design in 1993 by ''making a car for myself''-a Maruti Gypsy, which he simply converted into a hard-top. Eight years and hundreds of car redesigns after, Dilip Chhabria is all set to take his magic overseas. He's succeeded in impressing the government of a South American country-the 48-year-old maverick designer won't tell all-which now wants Chhabria to make a people's car. The government will invest some Rs 300 crore in the design and development of the vehicle, five prototypes of which are ready. Chhabria says if all goes well, he should be able to turn out 12-15,000 cars (from India) in two-and-a-half-years. And as proof of how far the project has actually progressed, Chhabria points out that he's ''spoken to the president of that country a couple of times''. Chhabria does plan to sell a few of those cars in India, which he hopes to price below the Maruti 800. Amen. |
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