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MINDING YOUR
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SAHIBS By Mike Ashley |
In April 1997,
Reggie Aggarwal and Sanju Bansal met at a tennis
tournament in Washington, D.C. They immediately
hit it off, and their conversation swiftly moved
from tennis to technology. They have a lot in
common: Both are successful young businessmen,
both grew up in Northern Virginia and both are of
Indian descent. |
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"We were talking about how there was a ton of technology entrepreneurs who are Indian, and we figured there should be a group that gets them all together," says 29-year-old Aggarwal, an attorney at the law firm of Shaw Pittman Potts & Trowbridge in D.C. The net result is the Indian CEO High Tech Council, a 145-member group composed of most of the top Indian CEOs and entrepreneurs in the region. It includes a heavy-hitting lineup of high-tech businesses from Northern Virginia, including MicroStrategy, Signal, Telecom Ventures, LCC and Primus Telecommunications. The council has a two-fold mission: to create a networking platform for Indian CEOs and to build relationships with the non-Indian business community. "You don't want a group that gets together and just talks about how great Indians are," laughs Aggarwal. "We want to invite other big players so they realize this is a market they want to tap into." Aggarwal says members' companies employ more than 15,000 people in the D.C. metro area and generate close to $4 billion in annual revenues. One-fourth of the council's members represent technology companies with revenues topping $40 million; 14 are publicly traded. One-third of the members are from companies with revenues between $15 million and $40 million, and another third are between $5 million and $15 million. The council doesn't charge membership dues. Instead it relies on corporate sponsorships. To date, the council has raised more than $200,000 from regional businesses including New Enterprise Associates, Merrill Lynch, NationsBank, Imperial Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We want to keep it [the membership] at a very senior level," says Aggarwal. "I'm talking about people that are expanding their businesses as opposed to starting them." The council's latest goal "is to get ... non-Indians involved because it's about business and success, not color and ethnic background," says Aggarwal. "We're on fire," enthuses Aggarwal, who has seen attendance grow from 35 members at the first meeting in June 1997 to a throng of 230 CEOs at the February meeting. "That dinner was unbelievable," he says. "People know we're not here trying to sell them anything. We're just creating opportunities to socialize and mingle, but we're already one of the most prominent groups in the region."
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