In early 2003, Jayesh Parekh, one of the founders of Sony Entertainment Television (SET), found himself at crossroads. Five years earlier, the serial entrepreneur had discovered a way to use his business skills in order to contribute to the social development sector, founding and financing ProPoor, which had become the leading Web portal for non-government organizations (NGOs) in South Asia.
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Although he was deeply involved in several successful ventures and had become wealthy through them, he was devoting more and more of his time to philanthropic causes. Once one has achieved his financial goals, he wondered, how should an inveterate entrepreneur manage the last half of life?
Jayesh Parekh was born in Mumbai to a Gujarati family, but spent his first 18 years in Kolkata where his father started a branch office of his family’s company. Parekh earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Maharaja Sayajirao (MS) University in Baroda in 1978, and that fall entered IIM Calcutta. After two trimesters, he faced a major life decision: finish IIM or get an engineering degree in the United States? He recounts:
"I grew up in a lower middle-class family, and I had nothing to fall back on. I couldn’t afford the fees in the US, but the University of Texas in Austin then offered me a research assistantship that would pay for a master’s degree in electrical engineering. My father had retired and we had no family money. Friends told me that if you have something to fall back on in India, IIM would assure a good professional career, but I wanted exposure to the US education and corporate life, so I took the chance and it changed my life."
After earning his master’s degree in 1980, Parekh worked for 18 months at the university’s Center for Electromechanics, which sponsored his US green card. While in Texas, he met and married his wife Mona. Parekh relates:
"We met in Kolkata, where she is from a wealthy diamond and jewelry family, so it was at best a platonic relationship. She had studied interior design in India, and asked me for help when she decided she wanted to continue her studies in the USA. I contacted several US colleges on her behalf, and she ended at Brooks College in Long Beach, California. She didn’t know anybody in LA, so she frequently visited me in Austin, where I had good friends. She moved to Austin in 1981 , and we married, very much against the wishes of her parents, who vehemently objected to her marrying such a commoner."
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Shortly after marrying, Parekh began working for IBM in Houston as a systems engineer, helping Chevron’s geologists and geophysicists get their applications for modeling oil fields to work on high-powered computers and vector processors. In 1989, after ten years’ absence from India, IBM started an offshore operation serving Indian customers based out of Singapore. When they sought experienced people to staff the operation, Parekh moved to Singapore as a systems engineer in April, 1989, to re-locate closer to family in India. In 1991, he took up an opportunity to move into sales and marketing, and fully expected to stay with IBM when he was confronted with a life-changing choice in 1993. The company was moving back into India, and Parekh had two choices: go to Bangalore or return to Houston. He relates:
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written by B.K. GANATRA, November 19, 2008
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You have really made it. Sucess does not come by chance,
it really need very hard efforts,