Organization: Hotmail.
Achievement: With his hotmail services, this Indian entrepreneur brought in popularity to the country as it was one of its kind in creation. This service was quickly acquired by Microsoft in 1998 and this creation by an Indian is till date considered to be the best with over 369 million registered users.
Sabeer Bhatia, a co-founder of Hotmail, is also known for his other business ventures and associations. He was born on December 30, 1968 to a Punjabi family in Chandigarh. His father, Baldev Bhatia, was an officer in the Indian Army who later joined the Indian Ministry of Defence, while his mother, Daman Bhatia, was a senior official at the Central Bank of India.
Sabeer Bhatia studied at the St. Josephs Boys High School in Bengaluru. In 1985, he began his undergraduate education at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) in Pilani and was transferred to Caltech after two years at BITS. After graduating from Caltech, Sabeer Bhatia went to Stanford University in 1989 to pursue his M.S. in Electrical Engineering. At Stanford, he worked on Ultra Low Power VLSI Design. Eventually, during his stay at Stanford, he got inspired by entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy and decided to become one himself.
Instead of pursuing a Ph.D. after his Masters, Sabeer Bhatia decided to join Apple in 1991. After a brief career at Apple, Sabeer Bhatia joined a start up company-called Firepower Systems Inc, where he spent two years successfully. In 1994, he started working on innovative ideas for the Internet and started a team in association with Jack Smith, a colleague from Apple Computer, Inc. Both came up with the concept of a web-based database entitled Javasoft. While pursuing this idea, they consequently realized the potential of a web-based e-mail system and thus decided to create one called Hotmail (the uppercase letters spelling out HTML – the language used to write the base of a webpage). In order to catch the attention of the Internet audience, the e-mail service was provided for free and revenue was obtained through the advertising on the website. Today, Hotmail is the world’s largest e-mail provider with over 369 million registered users.
After selling Hotmail in 1997, Bhatia became an Internet strategist for Microsoft Corporation in April 1999 for about a year. He left the company to start another new website, called as Arzoo Inc, which was shut down later.
In 2006, he re-launched Arzoo as a travel portal. In 2006, he became the prime investor for NeoAccel, a network security vendor and maker of SSL VPN-Plus.
In November 2007, Sabeer Bhatia released an online office alternative to Microsoft Office, called Live Documents.
In January, 2008, Sabeer Bhatia had announced the launch of his latest venture SabSeBolo.com, a free web-based teleconferencing system. He intended to develop a new city in India called Nanocity. The aim of Nanocity is to replicate the vitality and eco-system of innovation found in the Silicon Valley. However in July 2010, the project was cancelled by the HSIIDC.
Sabeer Bhatia has started a free messaging service called JaxtrSMS. He wanted to start free messaging between people.
