Today in Tech: Inspiring story of Kal Raman; School in the Cloud; Valuation gap & More

NS Ramnath
Updated: Mar 7, 2013 12:22:44 PM UTC

The inspiring story of Kal Raman Kal_Raman-300x232There's nothing surprising about finding Indians in American technology companies. Mukund Mohan, CEO in residence at Microsoft Accelerator in Bangalore told Times of India last year that of the six million people in Bay Area, half a million are Indians, and among them 72% work in the tech sector. A Kauffman Foundation study “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Then and Now” (pdf) says every third start-up in the US had a founder of Indian origin. Technology managers such as Padmasree Warrior of Cisco or Shantanu Narayen of Adobe and even pure techies such as Sanjay Ghemawat of Google are well known in India.

Yet, to read that Kal Raman might occupy the corner office at Groupon following the exit of its founder Andrew Mason was heartening. In the stories on contenders for CEO post, journalists mention Raman's experience in companies such as Walmart, eBay and Amazon, and his strengths as an operations guy. But, what's inspiring is his life before he went to US as a TCS software engineer. His father passed away when he was barely 15, and he had to finish his schooling with the meager pension that his mother got. He was a brilliant student. In Tamil Nadu where Kal is from, your brilliance is measured based on whether you get a seat in either engineering or medical college. He got both. With poverty weighing heavily on him, he had to struggle through his days at Guindy College of Engineering in Chennai and eventually landed a job at Tata Consulting Engineers in Mumbai. He attended the first day of his work with no shoes on. His manager was not impressed and asked him to come in shoes from next day. "I said I couldn't," he told Rediff. "This the manager construed as arrogance "How could you talk like this?" he asked me. I said, "Sir, it is not that I don't want to, but I can't afford to buy shoes."  His manager then asked him where he was staying. Raman replied: "Dadar Railway station".

(Read the full profile here.)

Raman came to global attention when he became Groupon's COO last year. The question now is whether he will take on as Groupon CEO?

Seems unlikely, as of now. Groupon board appears to believe that an external candidate would do the job better. "Directors expect to hire an executive-recruiting firm in the next two weeks and aim to find a new CEO within three to six months", Bloomberg reports.

 

Valuation gaps

Google’s prospects haven’t looked so promising to investors relative to Apple since before the iPhone was introduced, says Bloomberg.  The big reason: Google sells ads, while Apple merely sells devices.

Here's a quick look at how Indian IT Services companies have fared since 2011 in terms of market cap. HCL Tech is the big winner, followed by TCS. Wipro and Infosys seem to be tied at their hips.

Kal_Raman-300x232

More at Google Finance

 

Sugata Mitra's School in the Cloud
We all know how Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall experiment in a slum inspired Vikas Swarup to write Q&A, which eventually became the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Sugata Mitra's new vision has won him Ted Prize 2013, and his speech is worth listening to.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU[/youtube]

 

Also of interest
Giving money back to shareholders ain't so easy: Dell Said to Draw Interest From Blackstone to Lenovo (Bloomberg); Dell Board Defends Buyout Amid Mounting Investor Resistance (Bloomberg); Icahn builds Dell stake (CNBC)

Randy Mott marches on: GM to open fourth U.S. tech center, hire 1,000 people (Reuters)

The Minority Report moment: Should We Use Big Data To Punish Crimes Before They're Committed? (Popular Science)

 

 

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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