Inspiring Stories of Indians Making It Big Abroad: Share Your Success Stories Here

Hi All,

Can everybody share the successes of Indians who have made it big abroad?

Here, I give below one I came across recently.

Quote:

Ramesh Wadhwani, president and chief executive officer of SAI Systems International Inc. in Shelton. Spirituality is the company's name.

Ramesh Wadhwani is a highly principled man. He invokes spirituality in his personal and business dealings. While some people wear their hearts on their sleeves, Wadhwani goes one step further; he pays homage to his spiritual adviser and his philosophy in the name of his information technology consulting and technology services company, SAI Systems International Inc.

Wadhwani's journey from Poona, India, to Shelton had a few bumps along the way. But as he tells it, it has all been good for him and his family.

Wadhwani was born in Hyderabad Sind when the British ruled India. The city is now part of Pakistan. He would be the sixth son of seven boys in a family that also has two girls. His parents moved the family to Poona when he was 6 months old. He played soccer and cricket in high school and on community teams. He received his undergraduate degree in engineering from Poona Engineering College, the oldest school in the country. He received his master's degree in electronic engineering from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

In the fall of 1971, Wadhwani moved from India to St. Louis to earn a doctorate degree in biomedical engineering from Washington University. While pursuing his degree, Wadhwani began working for a startup company by the name of Artronix Inc., which was to become a pioneer in creating medical imaging systems. He assisted in the research and development of a cardiac catheterization device. He was also involved in nuclear medicine by helping in the calibration of radiation for the treatment of cancer. He and the team of scientists had to determine how to aim a cobalt beam at cancerous tissue in the body without damaging the good tissue surrounding it. Using a plastic bag of water - the body is 90 percent water - they were able to determine the proper angle and intensity by taking into consideration a number of factors, including the absorption coefficient of water and calibrate the beam for human use. He was also part of the team that developed computed tomography.

Wadhwani said his software career started with Artronix; "applying software to real-life problems." He left the firm in 1978 to join General Electric Co. in Salem, Va., as a senior scientist involved in a project to develop programmable controllers for everything from filling milk bottles at processing plants to oil well drilling. Developing controls of sequential processes - automation - involved microprocessor technology and timers that would sense light and pressure. The project was a success, Wadhwani said, with the system being sold to China Steel.

In November 1980, Wadhwani left GE to become a software systems manager with ITT, which built an advanced research and development technology center in Shelton. ITT was going to make state-of-the-art telephone control switches. "We used to have 30 percent Ph.D.s, 40 percent master's, and 10 percent bachelor's working at the R&D center. It was a rich mix of people in educational backgrounds."

There were 1,200 people working at the site in 1986 when the division was sold and moved to Paris. "To end it with a stroke of a pen was hard," Wadhwani said.

He prayed to his spiritual adviser for guidance. Wadhwani began his company in 1987 with six months of severance pay that he received from ITT.

The company began as a mail-order house, a "computer shop." It began with an initial investment of $700 for an ad in Computer Shopper magazine. He and a partner would sell IBM PC XT computers for $659. Orders started trickling in. He placed an order with a Pennsylvania company, but it couldn't meet Wadhwani's price. He then contacted a "firm" in San Diego. They took the money but didn't deliver. Wadhwani was getting desperate. He received an advertising card in the mail from a Los Angeles firm. He called, and they said they could meet his price. Wadhwani and his partner hopped a jet to California to meet the company owners and take a look at their inventory to make sure they were legitimate. The two men then traveled down to San Diego and found that the "company" that they sent the money to was just "two kids" who didn't know what they were doing. They refunded the money, and Wadhwani returned to S

The company would grow to $6 million over the next couple of years. It would also expand. In 1989, Wadhwani created a joint venture in Hong Kong with JP Technologies to create a distribution center for PC parts. A year later, he established a joint venture with Technica House in Taiwan to create a footprint PC. The small footprint PC is known as the Millennium. One customer of the PC is Diebold, which uses it in its automated teller machines. It is also used in camera security monitoring systems and to monitor highway traffic.

Growth continued for Wadhwani's company. The software business expanded to India, and later a firm in Venezuela marketed SAI System's IT services in South America.

All the while, Wadhwani focused on customer relationship management. "Our duty is to serve the customer. To make them happy is most important," he said. "A customer comes to us because someone else failed them."

All 60 workers at SAI Systems are told to "dedicate 100 percent to a client."

And Wadhwani continues to dedicate himself, not just to the customers but to the community. One Saturday a month he works in a soup kitchen in Bridgeport, just as he has for the past 20 years.

Unquote

Thanks, bala

Hi Bala,

I don't know much about the list... I'm sure there are many, especially in the IT industry, that set me thinking why Indians do particularly well abroad rather than in their own country. It's an established fact. If you visit Heathrow airport, you would see well-dressed Indians doing menial work with pride and dignity.

Check out this article...

Cheers,

Rajat

India languishes while Indians abroad succeed. Why?

"For a country of a billion people and a nuclear bomb, India does not count for much in the world. Its trade accounts for a scant 0.7% of the world total; it gets about one-tenth of the foreign direct investment that China attracts. It has no permanent seat on the Security Council. When pundits talk about the geo-strategic chessboard of the future, India has figured more often as a bishop or knight than as a queen. On this view, India is the world's biggest underachiever."

So says The Economist, the UK-published international magazine that features Atal Behari Vajpayee on the cover (Economist, September 4th). And that's not all of the ills that India faces. The magazine goes on to list umpteen others, most of which we are familiar with as a living reality rather than soulless statistics - a third of the population is poor, 40% are illiterate, and so on.

So what does this have to do with us as NRIs? The obvious answer is, of course, that anything said about or affecting India affects us. But beyond that?

Well, to answer that, consider this: by and large, Indians do extremely well once they leave India. In material terms, NRIs are very successful, even by their adopted country's standards. This is nothing new to us. But virtually all of us often wonder why Indians do well outside of India, but India as a country languishes.

Perhaps it is because of the achievements of Indians abroad that The Economist is able to say that India is an underachiever because how else could it benchmark India's performance in relation to itself? In a sense, this is a compliment because the magazine recognizes the country's potential. But fundamentally, what is India's problem?

Here's a theory: India's biggest problem is its mindset. India still views itself as a third world country or, less harshly, a "developing" one. Pandit Nehru is allegedly credited with creating the term "third world," and this is, in retrospect, his worst crime. In one stroke, India was labeled "third world" and all its actions stemmed from that attitude. To this day, India sees itself as a third world country, one of the better third world countries maybe, but a third world one nevertheless. Call it developing if you want. It makes little difference. You only have to see the results that have stemmed from this mindset - the dismal picture painted by The Economist.

Compare this "third world" mindset of India with the mindset of NRIs. Within a few months of arriving on foreign shores, most of us are able to drop the somewhat apologetic "I'm from a developing country" attitude when we soon realize that we are able to not only compete with "locals" but win, and win handsomely. It gives us a huge amount of self-belief, and all our future actions are taken with that self-belief.

Contrast that with what happens in India. We are happy being a "developing" country. So if we don't advance quickly enough, it really doesn't matter; blame it on the fact that we are developing. We readily accept situations that a "developed" country would not, regardless of whether we can do more to better our lot.

Here's a more common example - that of the student performing badly, but who is told he is highly intelligent and gifted, and that great things are expected of him. Contrast this with the student who is told that he is "weak" and needs to "improve." Who do you think will be more highly motivated and will, in the end, perform better? The first one without a doubt. The unshakeable self-belief has already been installed in him, and he expects great things of himself, whatever the obstacles. And his actions will reflect that self-belief, and he will not settle for less in the future.

India's problem is not dissimilar. As a country, it sees itself as a developing one. Imagine if this attitude changed overnight. Rather than viewing itself as a third world, developing country, it started viewing itself as a "first world" country that had some "third world" problems. No one is talking about denying reality. But if India changed its self-image, it would take the appropriate actions - quickly - to make sure its many problems were solved. It would take action to make sure that the actions it took matched the reality of its self-image. And as a nation, it would no longer readily accept second best.

If this sounds a little far-fetched, just think about yourself. When you set out for foreign shores, did you do so with a self-image of failure? Or did you start out imagining yourself successful, and then did everything in your power, overcoming significant obstacles, until that reality matched your self-image? Do you think you could achieve as much as you have if you forever thought of yourself as an inferior, third world product? It's only when you decided that you, a foreigner in a strange land, were on par with the locals that you were able to behave - and perform - as the best.

Or think about Japan and Germany. Both countries were razed to the ground in the Second World War. India had a better start than did Germany or Japan. Why are we so far behind them? Because from the beginning of their reconstruction, Germany and Japan viewed themselves as strong, dynamic countries that, having lost their standing in the world, had to regain it from the depths they had plumbed. And India? We didn't have a strong self-image to start with. The colonial legacy left us with a defeatist mindset, Mahatma Gandhi excepted, and far worse, we have accepted our lot as a "developing" nation.

India wasn't always a developing country. As we know only too well, it used to be one of the greatest countries on earth. But this was centuries ago and not something we can directly relate to as part of our daily experience. Still, once in a while we yell and scream our greatness to the world. But then we open our eyes, see some poverty and human suffering, we think to ourselves, of course, that's because we're a developing, third world country. And we lie back and accept that label. We stop screaming our greatness. We stop working to our full potential with the fire of self-belief.

We've got reality the wrong way round. Once developing, forever developing. If any real changes are to be made, we should start by wiping out the labels "third world," "developing," "poor," and other such words from our vocabulary, particularly in government. India will never fulfill its true potential if it sees itself as a third world state trying to become a first world state.

- Chetan Dhruve in London

Rather than viewing itself as a third world developing country, it started viewing itself as a "first world" country that had some "third world" problems.

Rajat, A very thought-provoking article. When I read what is quoted above, I realized that even the US (which is perceived as the richest one) has third world problems like what we see today after "Katrina," which is stated to be "a tale of systematic neglect, administrative incompetence, market-driven environmental destruction, and desperate poverty unfolding slowly but surely exposing squalor that would shame a third world country."

The statement above reminded me of the floods in Mumbai centering around the systematic environmental destruction around "Mithi River" (sorry, I might have spelled it wrongly). So, the US is no better???

Getting back to the topic, Chetan Dhruve seems to be right on the dot. We change our attitude and start believing in itself as a first world country with several third world issues. However, I personally still have no doubts that India will be one of the 3 or 4 biggest economies in the next 20 years or so. Indians abroad have been, are, and will continue doing better and better.

Thanks, Bala

Hi Bala,

I agree...

Long back, I read an interesting anecdote about why Indians work better in America. A big question raised by a great Indian leader was why Indians work better in America or under American leadership than in India or under Indian leadership. The answer lies in the fact that American leadership is truthful, listens, asks for inputs, admits its mistakes sincerely, works hard, and shows integrity. Americans associate emotionally and financially, rather than being a mere controlling high-fi personality ready to take all credit for themselves. On the other hand, Indians tend to do just the opposite.

Cheers,
Rajat