10 Indian Tech Heroes of Silicon Valley

Sundar Pichai

Born in 1972 in the southern state of Tamil Nadu Sundar went on to study Metallurigical Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur. It may sound counter logic hearing that the present CEO of Google was initially a student of a subject that nowhere related to computer and codes - further emphasizing the fact that your efforts matter most in life. Post completing his degree, he went onto pursue MS in Material Engineering from Standford and a MBA from Wharton. Rumour mill also suggest that Pichai was offered the post of a CEO at Twitter but Google payed him a fortune to keep him at bay. He is even speculated as candidate for the CEO of Microsoft - a post that eventually went on to fellow Indian Satya Nadella.

Satya Nadella

Nadella was born in Telugu speaking family in the city of Hyderabad in 1967. Having done his graduation in Electrical Engineering from Manipal Insitute of Technology he went on to do his M.S in Computer Science from the University of Milwaukee. Later Nadella received an MBA Chicago Booth School of Business. He started off his career at Sun Microsystems and then moved on to Microsft. He rose up the ranks for a decade and eventually became the CEO, Microsoft replacing Steve Ballmer.

Vinod Khosla

At 60, Vinod Khosla is one of the senior most Indian tech-entrepreneurs in the valley. An IIT Delhi alumnus of Electrical Engineering, Khosla went on to co-found the Sun Microsystems (popular for developing Java) along with Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim. He now heads his own Venture Capital firm Khosla Ventures (founded in 2004).

Padmashree Warrior

Padmashree Warrior was one of the first Indian woman to make it to the helm of the tech company in the Valley. An IIT Delhi alumnus of Chemical engineering became the Chief Technical Officer at Motorola after having been with them for over a span of 20 years. Later she moved on to Cisco in 2007, and is the CTO since then. She was even speculated to take the helm of Cisco but has not make it to the top as yet.

Shantanu Narayen

Heard of Adobe right? I bet, you did. But most here won't have heard of this man who is presently the CEO of the creative tools company. He did his graduation from Osmania University before moving to USA.

Om Malik

Born in Delhi in Om Malik did his graduation in Chemistry from St Stephen from where he moved on to US as a write for India Abroad. Later he moved on to Forbes, before founding his technology blog GigaOM in 2001. Being an Indian he did something at a time which unthinkable of down here - blogger as a profession was never acclaimed back then!

Amit Singhal

Born in the small city of Jhansi in Madhya Pradesh, Amit Singhal moved on to become the guy who spearheaded the algorithms for the popular search engine Google! An IIT Roorkee alumnus joined Google in 2001 after a stint at AT&T and eventually rewrote the algorithms code deployed for the search engine.

Sabeer Bhatia

Founder of the once popular Hotmail (now known as Outlook post Microsoft acquisition) was born in 1968 in the city of Chandigarh. Bhatia moved to the US in 1988 to study at the California Institute of Technology transferring from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science. He then went on to obtain a masters in electrical engineering from Stanford University before co-founding Hotmail with Jack Smith in 1996.

Vic Gundotra

It's safe to call him a social media tsar - as he is the man behind the popular Google+. Born in Mumbai in 1968, he was a Microsoft exec till 1991, post which he shifted base to join the search engine giant Google in 2007. He is now the Vice President, Social at Google and it known for his instrumental in the development of Google+ and its integration into almost every aspect of Google's services.

Vinod Dham

Born in 1950, he graduated from Delhi College of Engineering and thereby ending up in USA with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cinncinnati in 1971. A specialist in solid state electronics, Dham joined Intel where he developed the revolutionisng Pentium processors - often referred to as the Father of Pentium. He even went on to co-inventing Intel's first flash memory chips and thereby moving onto the post of VP, Microprocessors.

Ajay V Bhatt

USB has become a household name in the industry. But very few know of this man, called Ajay Bhatt who was instrumental behind developing this technology at Intel. Born in 1957, he did his graduation from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and then moved on to do his master from the City University of New York in USA. He is also behind pioneering technologies like the PCI Express and AGP (Acclerated Graphics port).

Ruchi Sanghvi

Born in 1982, Ruchi Sanghvi became the social networking giant Facebook's first female engineer when she joined them in 2005. She had moved on to US post graduation and did her Master in Electrical Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in 2004. In 2011, Sanghvi co-founded a collaboration startup called Cove along with another Indian Facebook engineer and Carnegie Mellon University alumni Aditya Agarwal. The company was later acquired by Dropbox, where she is currently the VP, Operations.