Success Formula: Exodus Communications

"Education, I believe is fundamental for the success of a person. Success and wealth creation happens with a good educational background which in my opinion is the basic foundation that helps to provide logical thinking, ability to see market direction etc."

For anyone acquainted with NRI and co-founder of Exodus Communications B.V. Jagadeesh, these are lines one will hear over and over again. Not too original, but very apt, and they contain a wealth of meaning for any budding entrepreneur who dreams of making it big in the nascent Information Technology industry in the country.

Jagadeesh shot into limelight in December and almost became a household name after his surprise donation announcement of $ 1 million to improve educational standards in BCC schools. It came as a surprise because education, especially in BCC and government schools, is a neglected sector and till Jagadeesh's gesture came along in December, there had been no such massive infusion of money.

But, a brief glimpse into Jagadeesh's background will indicate why he made the gesture. From a small village near Bagalur which is about 30 km from Bangalore, his education was mostly in middle class institutions. Schooling from Seshadripuram High School, pre-university in National College, engineering degree from UVCE and Masters from VJTI, Mumbai.

However, it was a dream which took him the United States of America where he co-founded Fouress Inc, a software consulting company specialing in Networking technologies. In 1994, he co-founded Exodus Communications with K.B. Chandra Sekhar. Eventually Fouress merged with Exodus in 1995.

"When we started Exodus, a lot of people laughed at us. They said we were taking on the job of the tele networks. But we had strong belief in our idea and thanks to our venture capitalist, who also believed in our idea, we managed to take off. Yes, Exodus today is wildly successful, even beyond our dreams. But a lot of that has to do with what we believed and worked towards.''

Today Exodus hosts some of the world's largest web sites like Yahoo, Lycos, Hotmail etc. and carries approximately 40% of world's internet content traffic, an indication of what is possible when people are willing to believe in themselves and work towards it.

So, despite all the cynics, where did all the success come from? Jagadeesh's explanation is very simple, and logical. "In a big company, getting the relevant decision makers together for a meeting to take a decision, could take weeks, if not even a month. And even then, one or two of them might not be able to make it because of the pressure of work. Many clients do not have the time for such delays. Instead they look for smaller companies where the organisational set up in much smaller, but more importantly, which can deliver. In Silicon Valley, reputation or size does not matter. Delivery does. And that's where we have been successful."

But Jagadeesh is not the kind of person who will rest on his laurels. Instead, he believes in spreading it - be it wealth or education. "Employee stock option is very important in our scheme of things. It is one way of making employees responsible which automatically translates into loyalty. Instead of cornering a large chunk of a small pie, increasing the size of the pie itself and having a small chunk will mean the same to me. But in the long run it is more beneficial because a lot more people are benefited and there is satisfaction all around."

However, Jagadeesh believes that it is most important to give back to those sectors which helped him and the likes of him to rise to their present stature. And hence the donation. Besides which, he is also involved in many more initiatives, almost all of them related to education and enhancement of quality. " I am also initiating entrepreneurial awards in several universities across India to promote creative thinking and to enable entrepreneurial activitiy right from the college days itself."

But that's not all. He also believes in helping budding entrepreneurs set up their establishments like he was helped once before when he was all fired up with just an idea. "Currently, I am involved with angel investing and mentoring in several companies in US and in India. I have been working with several companies for the past 3 months to help position them and will be funding them soon after appropriate due diligence. I have also invested in one venture capital firm in India and in the process of funding two more to primarily initiate venture capital actitivities similar to what happens in Silicon Valley."

Jagadeesh is presently CTO of Exodus and is responsible for the Technology Direction and helps Business Development and Mergers and Acquistions group in the company. Prior to becoming CTO he was responsible for the Exodus Backbone Network and Systems Management group. He helped build the organization from a start up to a successful IPO company. He has also worked at Novell on MultiProtocolRouter and 3Com's NetBuilder family of Routers before starting Fouress and Exodus. He served as Chairman of Networld + Interop's Engineer's conference during the years 1994 and 1995.

Jagadeesh believes that the IT industry in Bangalore is poised for a giant leap and would like nothing better for younsters to turn into budding entrepreneurs. And, just to indicate how much of the city's welfare he has at heart, he sat throughout the one-day Bangalore Summit organised by Bangalore Agenda Task Force and said he felt the initiative was just the thing that the city needed.

"It's a fantastic thing that is happening and the future looks very promising."

The VIRTUALBANGALORE team wishes him the best in all his future endeavours. May his tribe incresase!

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