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Vinod Khosla
Hot Hands
Vinod Khosla was once described by The Wall Street Journal as having the hot hand in the Silicon Valley right now. Today, he is, undoubtedly, among the Valleys hottest VC hands, funding new companies to help develop new technologies and innovation.

This co-founder of Sun Microsystems, upon turning VC in 1987, has been instrumental in nurturing numerous start-ups, ranging from multimedia, semiconductors, Internet software, and computer networking. Among the notable companies hes helped found include NexGen (bought by AMD), Excite, Juniper Networks, Cerent (bought by Cisco), and the latest in the line being in the areas of clean technology and biofuels as he turns Ethanol fuel evangelist.

After Daisy Systems, Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems. Sun's $150 bn market capitalization in 2000 made it the largest Indian-founded corporation.

CK Prahalad
Knowledge Guru
Regarded as one of the most influential thinkers on strategy in the current times, CK Prahalad is today the acknowledged #1 management guru. While bringing him acclaim in the world of business, his provocative management ideas are shaping up corporate strategies of some top notch firms, and influencing the business landscape.

CK Prahalad of the Bottom of the pyramid fame, in what can be termed among his most creative management ideas, sees the worlds poor as a potential untapped market for companies, worth anything up to $13 tn a year.

Prahalad is currently Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished Professor of Strategy at University of Michigan.

Kanwal Rekhi
The Entrepreneurs Muse

It is people like Kanwal Rekhi who make the Silicon Valley what it is, the tech entrepreneurs mecca. Actively helping young entrepreneurs get started, Rekhi embodies the spirit of the Silicon Valley in its true sense. An inspiration for the whole generation of tech entrepreneurs, he is the chairman, Board of Trustee of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, an organization that he founded with other entrepreneurs to promote young entrepreneurs.

Having been laid off thrice during his early career, he went on to become a success story as he came to be recognized for a penchant for launching and then selling his own start-ups and making millions out of them. He has been involved with over fifty start-ups in the Silicon Valley and founded the computer networking company, Excelan, in 1982. He was instrumental in listing the company on the NASDAQ in 1987, and then driving the merger with Novell in 1989.

Dr Arun Netravali
The Patents Man
Pioneering in the area of digital communications technology, he has applied his work to image processing and digital video, and earned patents relating to computer networks, human interfaces to machines, picture processing and digital television, etc. Dr Netravalis contributions have helped transform television from analog to digital.

He has served as president of Bell Labs and as CTO and chief network architect for Lucent. He was instrumental in improving Bell Labs R&D productivity by 40%, with the patent rate climbing to four per day and numerous leading-edge products introduced in wireless, optical and data communications at record speeds. Among his significant contributions has been leading the R&D of Bell Labs' HDTV initiative.

Padmasree Warrior
Woman on Top

Being among the handful of the high-ranking Indian-American women in the field of technology in the US is no mean achievement. She was also the highest-ranking female executive in Motorola's nearly 80-year history till not so long back when she decided to move to Cisco as executive VP and CTO.

In her new role at the technology forefront of Cisco, she will be guiding the networking giants technology vision. Her over two decades long stint at Motorola, where she led a team of over 4,600 technologists, will stand her in good stead.

Arun Sarin
A Wide Spectrum
Arun Sarin, chief executive, Vodafone, is one of the frontrunners in the race of global Indians making it to the top echelons of leading global companies, still continuing to lead the charge and making a big success out of them. Sarin has been doing that and more as he continues to expand the business, now getting closer to home, buying a 67% stake in Hutch.

A prominent figure in the wireless industry, he has been instrumental in influencing the industrys global growth and expansion. Sarin is credited with a sharp eye for the preparation and financial analyses for business mergers and acquisitions in the growing telecommunications industry. Added to his financial acumen is his technical knowledge and keen sense of business strategy, which is behind his meteoric rise up the ladder into top management.

Vinod Dham
Chipping New Paths

There perhaps might have been no Intel Pentium Processor had there been no Vinod Dham. And, what better time to realize the significance of his contribution than now when Pentium has more than proved its worth and become the hallmark of the processing world. Therefore, it is quite appropriate that he is often referred to as the father of the Intel Pentium Processor.

He left Intel in 1995, and joined a number of startups including NexGen, which was acquired by AMD, where he helped the company give stiff competition to its arch rival Intel, with its K6 micrprocessor. Thereafter he joined Silicon Spice. As Dham had once reportedly said, Living in the Silicon Valley, if you do not do a startup, then something is wrong with you.

Sabeer Bhatia
The Young Icon
From a Bangalore whizkid to the posterboy of Indians with Silicon Valley dreams, Sabeer Bhatia has been an inspiration for a whole generation of Internet entrepreneurs. After all, not every 28-year-old gets Bill Gates to show interest in buying his/her company; finally walking away with a plush $40 mn. He democratized the email at a time when the concept of the ubiquitous Web-based email service was hitherto unknown, and revolutionized the entire communication paradigm in the new world of Internet.

Success begets success, but it eluded his next venture, Arzoo, which shut down during the dot com bubble burst though it was relaunched in 2006 as a travel portal.

Rajat Gupta
Business Strategist
Rajat Gupta is one of the foremost business strategists of the global age. This former McKinsey head has a broad range of consulting experience ranging across industries like telecommunications, energy, and consumer goods. In 1994, when he was elected CEO of McKinsey, he was among the first Indians to successfully break through the ceiling.

Even as he continues to be senior partner worldwide at McKinsey, hes involved himself with several non-profit institutions focused on education, health and development. Gupta is credited with holding senior positions at the World Economic Forum and the UN where he has been special adviser to the then secretary-general, Kofi Annan, on management reforms.

Shantanu Narayen
Making a Mark

Shantanu Narayen is a recent addition to the list of Indians reaching the peak in the global business world. Though hes recently taken up charge of one of the worlds largest software companies, Adobe, Narayen has been an old hand at Adobe and an integral part of its innovation culture. He has steered the company as it expanded its global reach and product portfolio. Narayen played an instrumental role in Adobes acquisition of Macromedia as he co-led the $3.4 bn acquisition. Before joining Adobe in 1998, he was co-founder of Pictra and held senior management positions at Apple Computer.

Mohan Gyani
The Wireless Whiz
Former AT&T Wireless Mobility Services chief , Mohan Giyani played a strategic role in expanding AT&T across the US and building up their next-generation systems for global mobile communications. He also played a critical role in the merger of AirTouch and Vodafone and its subsequent joint venture with Bell Atlantic that resulted in the creation of Verizon Wireless. There he was instrumental in leading the companys growth, through an IPO, to a $70 bn enterprise over a five-year period.

Gyani has been vice chairman of Roamware, since January 2006. Prior to that, he has served as chairman and CEO of Roamware, from May 2005 through December 2005, and also as president and CEO of AT&T Wireless Mobility Services.

Vyomesh Joshi
The Man with Clout

When Fortune magazine had issued a special list called Diversity 2005: People With the Most Clout, Vyomesh Joshi was one among the only three Indian Americans. Considering that Joshi sits on HP's imaging and printing intellectual property portfolio of more than 12,500 patents worldwide, he indeed holds a lot of clout. As Fortune said, Restructuring aside, Joshi is still the straw that stirs the drink. Despite rival Dell's push into printers, his unit alone would rank #79 on the Fortune 500, says it all.

Joshi, who heads HPs Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), is spearheading the companys drive toward a premier printing company and not just a premier printer company. Under his leadership, IPG has grown from $19 bn to $26 bn and doubled its operating profit.

Narinder Singh Kapany
An Unsung Hero
Credited with the invention of optical fiber, Dr Narinder Singh Kapany is one of Indias greatest contribution to the telecom world. In 1952, Kapanys studies led to the invention of optical fiber iving him the title: the father of optical fiber. In fact, Fortune named him as one of the Unsung Heroes in its issue on businessmen of the century.

He founded his first company, Optics Technology, way back in 1960, at a time when the Silicon Valley was not even known by this name. This makes him, probably, the first Indian entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley apart from being a researcher par excellence. In April 2000, he founded his third start-up, K2 Optronics.

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