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| May, 1999 Volume 5, Number 5 HOME EDITORIAL COVER STORY SPECIALS IMMIGRATION EVENTS CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH ARCHIVES |
Cover Story
THE WIND BENEATH THE WINGS In a society where men and women live together, neither of them can be successful without the support of each other. Behind every successful woman there is a man and vice versa. But men are always blamed for dominating and exploiting the women. In reality, we see that most of the men really have noble qualities. They help their wives in all possible ways. They are very affectionate, anchoring, caring, and understanding. This article is a tribute to those men behind the successful women.
The Indian women have come a long way from their homemaker life. Nucleus family, economic necessity and a change in attitude have brought about a difference in the traditional way of raising their family. Fathers and husbands no longer want their daughters and wives to be submissive. They encourage the women in their house to be aggressive and achieve their dreams of becoming professional women. Today about 60 percent of Indian women in America are working and the
trend of married women joining the workforce is increasing rapidly. It is not only the
economic necessity, the lure of a comfortable life and the quest for a separate identity
which make them enter into the professional arena but it is also their strong desire to
serve the society and nation. Whatever the reasons, today's professional women are
tailoring their lives to make everything fit: career, children, home and husband. Of
course without the support of their husbands it is hard to achieve this. The Couples We picked four successful women and their husbands from the Bay Area to share with us the reasons for their success. The couples are Dr. Vijaya (Joy) Raman and Mr. Raman, Mrs. Veena Mirch and Mr. Mirch, Mrs. Valya Ragu and Mr. Ramesh Ragu, and Mrs. Anupama Dalal and Mr. Dhananjay Dalal. Dr. Vijaya Raman is an experienced obstetrician & gynecologist,
Mrs. Anupama Dalal is a well-known musician in the Bay Area. She has
been married to Mr. Dhananjay Dalal for 10 years and they have two children: an
eight-and-a-half-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy. She has been teaching Hindustani
classical and semi-classical music, Bhajans, and Gazals for seven years. She learnt music
from her mother,
All these successful women said that their husbands were very supportive and understanding. Apart from being a moral support, these men go out of their way to help their wives whenever possible. Managing Home and Profession
Read the rest of this cover story in our May 99 issue. Did you like this story ? ACTIVE TOUCH: BROADENING THE
INFORMATION HIGHWAY FOR REAL-TIME BUSINESS INTERACTION
Go to www.webex.com and experience by yourself how powerfully you can communicate through the Web. Founded by Subrah Iyer and Min Zhu in 1996, ActiveTouch is the first company to provide world's complete web-based meeting service. Its WebEx software and services enable people scattered around the world to easily meet and share documents, spreadsheets, browsers, presentations and applications free of charge. All that is required to achieve this are a telephone and a browser. The Seed of the Concept Subrah Iyer, a graduate from IIT Bombay, India, came to the U.S. and worked for Intel for six years and then for Apple for another six years (a rare combination of Intel and Apple, of course!) in a variety of roles which include sales, marketing and business development. Subsequently he worked in a couple of small companies and then he joined Quarterdeck, where he was the general manager in the Internet business division. Then he and his partner Min Zhu founded their own company ActiveTouch based on a common vision of bringing people together from anywhere in the world, to work together on the Web. Iyer explains the compelling reason behind starting this business: I was always interested in collaboration and networking. In my early days, when I was doing marketing, I used to travel a lot all over the country. I got sick of it because I've been traveling for years. Then the idea of using Web for collaboration, that is using the computer to make presentations or view spreadsheets or work with graphs came to my mind. I was inspired by the concept of real-time collaboration where people can work together easily. As I was managing people at that time, I saw the amount of money spent on traveling and I saw the connection. So the seed of the concept of real-time collaboration through the Web was sown which led him to start ActiveTouch. The Company
Iyer's dream of making the world a more accessible, approachable place together with Zhu's vision for creating the most robust, scalable and yet easy-to-use collaboration engine for the Web resulted in the birth of ActiveTouch. Iyer has 15 years of business experience at Intel, Quarterdeck, Teleos Research and Apple whereas Zhu brings over 14 years of software development experience from IBM, Price Waterhouse, ExpertEdge and Quarterdeck to ActiveTouch. ActiveTouch, with the strong business skills of Iyer and the technical skills of Zhu, has grown steadily. The company has an offshore office in China, and is building relationships with companies in India. It has 60 employees in the U.S. office and 25 employees offshore. Iyer and Zhu have the personality required to manage teams of multicultural background and they enjoy working with them. ActiveTouch's customers are mostly consultants and software companies that want to demonstrate their products on-line. The company is also licensing the virtual-meeting technology to companies that want to develop their own services, as the Baan company, a corporate computing software producer, has done in creating an on-line service called Cyber Consult that Baan peddles to its own customers. Recently ActiveTouch announced that Compaq is the first partner of its new WebEx licensing/OEM program. ActiveTouch offers both free and paid services. The free service offers limited features whereas the paid one offers unlimited capabilities and as many as 500 people can work together at the same time. Products and Services ActiveTouch released its first product/service on February 8, this year, and it had great response from users. It's virtual offices facilities start this month. We want to be the meeting center on the Web for business people. There are thousands of chats available on the Web for casual users. But ours is much more than chat. You can go to webex.com and see the capabilities we provide, says Iyer. The webex.com site lets users share documents, browsers, presentations and applications free of charge. Web-based teleconferencing is also available at half the price of traditional careers. The site allows users who are linked to one another by standard telephone and the Internet to discuss and work collaboratively on documents, spreadsheets and other application software for personal computers running Microsoft Windows. Participants in WebEx meetings share control over applications, so that even if they are miles apart they can add or subtract elements to a common project. A graphic designer might polish a document layout, for example, and then turn cursor control over to a copy editor to edit or trim the text, while all involved in the virtual meeting watch the changes being made.
ActiveTouch is the only company which offers real-time instant document sharing facility. So right now there are no competitors. ActiveTouch has a wide lead in this new emerging marketplace with no competitors in sight, says Hendrick, IDC. Given the complexity of this task, it will take another two to three years for another vendor to receive this capability, even if that vendor starts working on it today. Secret of Success No doubt, this Silicon Valley start-up is on its way to winning many awards and honors. By looking at ActiveTouch's services and the demand in the market, we can firmly say that this company is going to be very successful in the near future. ÒWe believe that WebEx from ActiveTouch will eventually become an essential communications service for corporations, just like telephones and e-mails are today, writes Patricia Seybold Group. The IDC compliments, The painstaking care of this management team, combined with the evident technical expertise shown by the technology, speaks volumes for the capabilities of this company. IDC believes that ActiveTouch and its products are likely to be very successful. ActiveTouch is receiving lot of appreciation from its customers. A professor from New York wants to use the WebEx Meeting Center to teach disabled children. These kind of things give me great satisfaction and inspiration, says Iyer. When asked for the reason for his success, Iyer modestly remarks, ActiveTouch is just moving in to the limelight. We are yet to achieve a lot. We are still growing. He says. The intensity of your intrinsic interest in what you are doing is the key to your success. I am very curious about what it is and how it is. It's like playing a game, a serious professional game of course, like cricket. I want to be the captain not because I want to be the boss, but to play the game the way I like. It is not the money or power, but it is the luxury of playing which interests me. It was obvious for us when he literally ran between two rooms in his office to demonstrate his WebEx service, like a small boy who is enthusiastic about showing his toy to his friends. He considers his work so interesting that he takes it also to his home. I am always playing the game and I'm always thinking of it. It's my personality, says Iyer who relaxes by spending time with his two daughters and his wife. For New Entrepreneurs Interest in what you are doing and perseverance are important in a business. You have to really treat it like a game. It is something which you are really interested in. It is not just a means of making money. You have to remember that, advises Iyer for young entrepreneurs. Read the rest of this cover story in our May 99 issue. Did you like this story?
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practicing for 30 years. She has been married to Mr. Raman, a software
engineer, for over 30 years. Their children Satish and Sarita are both pursuing medical
careers. Vijaya got her graduate medical degree from BJ Medical College, Pune, took her
postgraduate training at Sassoon Hospital, Pune, and did her residency in obstetrics and
gynecology at Albany Medical Center, NY. Even though obstetrics & gynecology (OB/GYN)
is a hard specialty with very long hours day and night she has immensely enjoyed taking
care of women, young and old, either having multiple problems or needing health
evaluation. She has won many awards for her proficiency in education as well as sports.
She was Triple Crown winner in Table Tennis in medical school. She has got Ford Foundation
award and AMA physician recognition award and she chaired the Department of OB/GYN at
Santa Teresa Community Hospital for two years where she was also in charge of OB/GYN staff
education for almost 20 years. In that capacity, she was instrumental in introducing new
technologies like laser, endoscopic surgery, and others. She constantly gets involved in
many seminars addressing womenÕs healthcare issues. Intense genuine desire to help people
and love for her job of womenÕs healthcare are reasons for her success. She speaks many
Indian languages including Tamil, Marathi and Hindi.
Mrs. Veena Mirch and Mr. Mirch are well-established full-time
Realtors. They have been married for 23 years and have two daughters, one currently
working in San Francisco after her graduation from Berkeley, and the other being in the
second year of college in Riverside, LA. Veena had worked in the Indian Consulate as Radio
announcer for Indians in the seventies, and got lot of appreciation for her good Hindi.
She is in the real estate business for 8 years and her husband for 20 years. Mirch is
basically a mechanical engineer but later entered into the real estate field. Both of them
have got Master Award for this year. They are president club members. Mirch got the Master
Award last year also. Veena has been getting the president award for so many years. She
did her GRI in the U.S. She is so successful that she often gets calls from Indian
magazines for interviews. Her care for the clients and her efficiency are the reasons for
her success, among other things.
who is also a
classical singer, and then from her guru Mohammad Hussain Khan Saheb, a famous Sarangi
player and a vocalist. At present she has 30 deciples. Mr. Dalal is a senior manager in
Oracle Corporation and is in the computer field for about 20 years. She has won many
awards in India and has been honored by FIA some time ago. She has participated in many
cultural programs in the Bay Area. She loves music to the extent that it is like a
breathing. She is versatile in different styles of music, which is why she is successful.
Painting and traveling are her hobbies.
Mrs. Valya Ragu is a full-time Realtor and she has been in the
business for the past 9 years. She is married to Mr. Ramesh Ragu for 16 years and they
have two sons: Rahul Ragu, 12, going to Junior High School, and Rajiv Ragu, 9, studying in
Challenger elementary School. Ramesh is a senior manager in Deloitte Touche Consulting,
one of the five big management consulting firms in the U.S. Before coming to this field
she had worked with financial institutions. Her background is in public relations and
advertising. She has a bachelors degree in English literature and was pursuing her MBA in
San Jose State University. Her strong liking to interact with people and to deal with
property made her enter into the real estate business. Valya has consistently been a top
producer and an award winner in real estate. She received the prestigeous 1998 Centurion
Award at the National Realtor Convention in Los Vegas this year. She is also a Grand
Masters Award winner and sold over 30 houses in 1997. Being friendly with every one, being
customer focused, and her positive attitude and patience are the reasons for her success. 
Having a family alone does not make an educated woman's life complete. Apart
from family life she should have a career to make use of her knowledge, skills, and
experience which she acquired over the years. Career makes her life more complete. In
general, Indian women place marriage and children in the first place and career in the
second place. But there are successful women who can balance both career and family. How
do they do it? Veena says, Oh, that is not a problem at all. I get all the cooperation
from children and husband. So nothing is a problem. Vijaya was lucky to have her mother,
husband and a great nanny to help when the kids were young. With the help of understanding
husband and children and of course by managing time, I am able to balance both, she says.
Can three collaborating scientists, in London, New
York and Bangalore, discuss their results or edit and mark up their research paper on-line
jointly, before sending it to a publisher, and hence save their time? Or can a person in
Seattle make a real-time business presentation to the clients in Africa and India
simultaneously without traveling? Yes itÕs possible thanks to ActiveTouch's Web Meeting
Center at 
No Competition