Indian-American serial entrepreneur Naren Bakshi spoke at a special meeting at the Ariel International Center in Cleveland on August 3,2012.
Bakshi was born in Jaipur, India and came to the US for graduate school in 1966. He earned his M.S. in Industrial Engineering (1968)an M.B.A. in Finance and Marketing (1969) from the University of California, Berkeley. Bakshi and a small group of Indian students founded UC Berkeley’s first Indian Association, and he served as its first President.
Naren Bakshi
After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1969, Bakshi moved to Cleveland, Ohio to work for Standard Oil and British Petroleum. He later served in various management positions at TRW from 1980 to 1991. He also served as Vice President of Information Services at Ameritrust Bank. While in Cleveland, he was Founding Chairman of the first Indian Community Center in North America in 1976.
After moving back to the Bay Area in 1989, he founded Versata in 1992 and served as President, CEO and Chairman of Versata, a company that went public in 2000 with over $1 Billion valuation. Naren Bakshi is also a Founding Partner of CEOJumpStart. He co-founded Xpede in 1998, a provider of e-commerce lending services to major financial institutions. Bakshi now serves as the Chairman of the Board of Xpede.
Bakshi is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and has served as a Trustee of TiE Global.
Pradip Kamat introduced Naren Bakshi
Pradip Kamat
Bakshi told the group that Environment and Ecosystem matter in building businesses.
Bakshi spoke about the importance of successful business people giving back. The idea of TiE Charter Members was 'Can we find successful entrepreneurs who want to give back?"
TiE Ohio Charter Members Harry Weller, Ratanjit Sondhe, Pradip Kamat, Naren Bakshi, Richard Herman, Radhika Reddy, Richard Eastburn and Raj Aggarwal
Mr. Bakshi told of the new 'Rest of the World' Chapter of TiE, The International Entrepreneur, and the possibility of virtual special interest groups at a special meeting in Cleveland.
Radhika Reddy hosted the event at the Ariel International Center
