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Vijay Parikh

I have faint recollections of the six-month hiatus post the ISC examinations.  I recall running into Anand Krishna who persuaded me to enroll at Elphinstone College.  Unfortunately for me, after three glorious days at Elphinstone, I got a letter summoning me to BITS Pilani. Pilani was very different from Bombay.  Delhi, about five hours away by bus was the prize awaiting us starving students.  Finished with an EE degree there but I realized my heart really was not in it.  (As an aside, Pankaj Saran was also there at Pilani but left after a few years). I went off to do my MBA at the University of Michigan (graduating the year Munaf entered apparently) and went to work at Rockwell International for the next seventeen years.  Working at Rockwell was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. My first wife Suhasini Sheorey (Fort Convent and Elphinstone, some of you might remember her) passed away in 1991.  I relocated to Tokyo still under the Rockwell banner and got remarried in December of 1993. After a start up, and the obligatory Silicon Valley stint at Cisco, I am now in Venture Capital at Global Catalyst Partners (send us your ideas for financing!).  You can look us (and me) up at www.gc-partners.com.  Strangely enough, Bhaskar at IIT-M is advising one of the companies we are financing! I get to go to India about 3 times a year looking for companies to finance.  Hopefully by monitoring the get together dates, I'll get a chance to meet all of those who are Bombay based. I greatly enjoy traveling to exotic places, fine wine, a great hand of bridge and reading Biggles, PG Wodehouse, Tintin etc.  I also spend a fair bit of time trying to build high end tube (Tubes! Remember them?) based audio systems on very low end budgets.