College Dropouts who made it big - Subash Chandra Goel

Here's something not many people know about

Subhash Chandra Goel : The Zee chairman dropped out after standard 12.


Subhash Chandra started his own vegetable oils unit at 19. It was, in a manner of speaking, his first job. Years later, a casual visit to a friend at Doordarshan gave him the idea of starting his own broadcasting company. We all know how that story ran.


Chandra knew nothing about programming, distribution or film rights. What he did understand quite well was the Indian sensibility though. Funded by UK businessmen, Zee came into being as India's first satellite TV network.


Today, it reaches 320 lakhs homes, connecting with 20 crores people in South Asia alone. The network also covers Asians in America, the Middle East, Europe, Australia and Africa, making this dropout a very rich one.

College Dropouts Who Made It Big - Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph Ellison (1944-) , co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, founded his company in 1977 with a sum of $2,000. Once a school dropout, he is now, according to Forbes, one of the richest people in America with a net worth of around $184 crores. The figure also makes him the ninth richest in the world.

As a young man, Ellison worked for the Ampex Corporation, where one of his projects was a database for the CIA. He called it Oracle, a name he was to reuse years later for the company that made him famous.

Interestingly, the organisation' s initial release was Oracle 2. The number supposedly implied that all bugs had been eliminated from an earlier version.

Ellison is quite a colourful man, and has long dabbled in all kinds of things. Want to learn more? Try his biography, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison.

Interesting Facts About eBay

The online auction Web site was founded in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb, part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus

The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."

Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay's first employee and Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in 1996

eBay went public on September 21, 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires. The company purchased PayPal on October 14, 2002.

Interesting Facts About Dell

While a student at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, Michael Dell founded the company as PC's Limited with capital of $1000.

The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988

In 1999, Dell overtook Compaq to become the largest seller of personal computers in the United States of America with $25 billion in revenue reported in January 2000.

In 2006, Dell purchased the computer hardware manufacturer Alienware. Dell Inc.'s plan anticipated Alienware continuing to operate independently under its existing management. Alienware expected to benefit from Dell's efficient manufacturing system


In 1998, Ralph Nader asked Dell (and five other major OEMs) to offer alternate operating systems to Microsoft Windows, specifically including Linux, for which "there is clearly a growing interest" Dell started offering Linux notebook systems which "cost no more than their Windows 98 counterparts" in 2000, and soon expanded, with Dell becoming "the first major manufacturer to offer Linux across its full product line" But by early 2001 Dell had "disbanded its Linux business unit"

On April 18, 2007 a report appeared suggesting that Michael Dell used Ubuntu on one of his home systems.

Dell Inc has invested an estimated 60 million US Dollars in a new manufacturing unit in Chennai, India, to support the sales of its products in the Indian subcontinent.

On June 5, 2007, Dell set a goal of becoming the greenest technology company on Earth for the long term. The company launched a zero-carbon initiative that includes:

1. reducing Dell's carbon intensity by 15 percent by 2012
2. requiring primary suppliers to report carbon emissions data during quarterly business reviews
3. partnering with customers to build the "greenest PC on the planet"
4. expanding the company's carbon-offsetting program, "Plant a Tree for Me".

College dropouts who made it big - steve jobs

Steven Paul Jobs (1955-) and Apple Computer are names that have long gone together.


Born in the United States to an unknown Egyptian-Arab father, Jobs was adopted soon after birth. After graduating high school, he enrolled in Reed College, dropping out after one semester.


In 1976, 21-year-old Jobs and 26-year old Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Co. in the family garage. Jobs revolutionised the industry by popularising the concept of home computers.


By 1984, the Macintosh was introduced. He had an influential role in the building of the World-Wide Web, and also happens to be Chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios.


Today, with the iPod, Apple is bigger than ever. Incidentally, Jobs worked for several years at an annual salary of $1. It got him a listing in the Guinness Book as `Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer.' He was once gifted a $9 crores jet by the company though. And his net worth? More than $3 billion

College Dropouts who made it big - Dhirubai Ambani

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani (1932-2002) was born into the family of a schoolteacher. It was a family of modest means. When he turned 16, Dhirubhai moved to Aden, working first as a gas-station attendant, then as a clerk in an oil company.


He returned to India at 26, starting a business with a meagre capital of $375. By the time of his demise, his company - Reliance Industries Ltd - had grown to become an empire, with an estimated annual turnover of $120 crores!


Dhirubhai was, in his lifetime, conferred the Indian Entrepreneur of the 20th Century Award
by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. A Times of India poll in the year 2000 also voted him one of the biggest creators of wealth in this century.


Dhirubhai's is not just the usual rags-to-riches story. He will be remembered as the one who rewrote Indian corporate history and built a truly global corporate group. He is also credited with having single-handedly breathed life into the Indian stock markets and bringing in thousands of investors to the bourses.

College dropouts who made it big - Bill Gates

Are college dropouts more successful than people with good education? It would seem so if you consider that many billionaires are people who dumped college. However, what this hides is the fact that although millions quit studies before completing them, very few of them go on to become rich. What the list of the super-rich dropouts signifies is that in business, a top degree is not as important as having the right aptitude, attitude, determination and vision.

Here are some dropouts who went on to become billionaires:


William Henry Gates III (1955-), along with Paul Allen, co-founded Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software maker. Bill Gates, the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $480 crores (Rs 211,200 crore!), is probably the best-known college dropout.


Gates attended an exclusive prep school in Seattle, went on to study at Harvard University, then dropped out to pursue software development. As students in the mid-70s, he and Paul Allen wrote the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful PC.

In 1975, Micro-Soft - later Microsoft Corporation - was born. Three decades on, Gates has been Number One on the Forbes 400 for over a dozen years. And here's something you probably didn't know: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently provides 90 per cent of the world budget for the attempted eradication of polio

The Art of Goal Setting

At the beginning of every new academic year in school, teachers would make us write down a list of five goals we were planning on achieving by the end of that year. As children we tend to have the habit of doing what our parents and teachers ask us to do but as we grow older and more responsible, no one is around to help us with the same. There is no spoon-feeding, no one to ask us to follow rules or set goals. In such situations, if we have it in us then we go about making our own goals and objectives and trying to achieve those; more often we do not! The art of goal setting is not a difficult task but the ability to work toward accomplishing those goals is where the trouble lies. If I ask you to take a paper and write down where you want to be in five years time, I am sure most of us would write down big aspirations and dreams. Now if you were asked to look at the list and practically and sensibly think which one of these goals you will definitely work toward achieving, then I am sure the list will shorten automatically. Goal setting can be done based on only one thing and that is your perseverance. The reason you should have behind goal setting is to be better prepared to face the challenges life will throw at you, and to handle current problems and tasks at hand in a proper, planned manner.

There is no particular way or method of goal setting but a few steps can be followed. Goal setting should be done keeping in mind your comfort levels. Goal setting includes these basic steps:

Deciding your goal and goal statement Defining the path to your goal Motivating yourself Tracking work done Review of work done Feedback from peers or superiors Setting higher / next goals

Here is a brief on each of these steps and how to go about implementing them 1. Deciding your goal and goal statement According to Paul Christenbury in his article Steps for Successful Goal Setting and Achievement, “A good way to remember how a goal statement should be defined is the old S.M.A.R.T. acronym used by many experts in goal setting. SMART stands for Specific Measurable Action-Oriented Realistic Time and Resource Constrained Taking this forward, I feel that every goal or goal statement that you define should be something that is closely associated with you, your day-to-day activities, or work. Define goals that make sense to you. This basically means that you should sit down and clearly write down practical and achievable goals for the near future before defining goals that you want to achieve five years down the road. 2. Defining the path to your goal Once you know your goal it is very important to define the path you will follow to reach it. you have to make sure that you have written down how you want to get to where you want to be in the near future. The path has to be measurable and practical. It could be that your goal is to improve your command over the English language, so basically your path will be: read more books, look up meanings of new words, talk to people who are good with the language, take online tests. 3. Motivating yourself Keeping yourself motivated throughout is not easy but you have to look at the bigger picture. If you want to succeed in photography then you have to practice. You cannot become a world renowned photographer just because you want to; you have to work towards it. reading motivational quotes always helps. Some of the examples include taking prints of favorite quotes and have them pasted over office desk, at work, on your mirror at home. Whenever one feels low and feel like giving up read these to help get a jump-start. Talking to peers, seniors at work, and parents is another way to get motivation. 4. Tracking work done If you want to reach somewhere you have to keep track of your work so that if you have to go back and redo it, you will find it easy. If we do not have any accountability of what we are doing and how we are doing it, we are likely to lose sight of the real thing and fail. 5. Review of work done Once you have finished your tasks to reach your goal, it is important to do a review of what you have completed. This helps you better prepare for your next set of goals and to see if you have achieved everything and in the way you had planned. If something was easier than others, etc. 6. Feedback from peers and superiors Always make sure that you have enough feedback from your peers and superiors. They could be your family, close friends, college professors, etc. who can help you decide if you have been on the right path to achieve you goals. It always helps to have someone on the outside review your work and give you advice on the same. Whether you accept it or not will be up to your discretion. 7. Setting higher / next goals Once you have reached your goal, it is time to move on to bigger goals. These could be related to your last goal or they could be different ones. Sometimes though your goal is such that it requires constant attention, like if you are planning on having better written English, then you need to keep practicing the language in various ways. So this goal is such that it needs to be practiced constantly. Goal setting is a good habit but only if you create a way or path of achieving these goals. Saying that you want to climb a mountain and doing nothing about it is not goal setting. Goal setting is when you decide to take rock climbing classes, learn the mechanisms of mountaineering, meet people who have done so, learn from them and then chalk out your plan as to when you want to do the same. So go out there and get cracking…there are many goals to be set and many to be achieved!

Interesting Facts About Cognizant

Cognizant has been named to the 2007 Fortune 100 Fastest-Growing Companies List for the fifth consecutive year, making it the only company receiving the “Five-year all-stars” distinction in 2007’s list.

Cognizant started in 1994, as Dun & Bradstreet Satyam Software (by Sushant Gupta) - the in-house technology development center for the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B) and its operating units

It became the first company in the world to be certified for CMMI-Level5 per the latest model

On March 5th 2007 Cognizant became first American company to ring the NASDAQ opening bell remotely, from the Company's Chennai, India techno-complex.

Interesting Facts about Cisco

• Cisco was founded by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner and Richard Troiano
• Like apple, the two main founders bosack and Lerner were fired in 1990
• The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name, San Francisco
• In late March 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco was the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than US$500 billion.
  According to author Ethan Gutmann, Cisco and other telecommunications equipment providers supplied the Chinese government with surveillance and Internet infrastructure equipment that is used to block Internet websites and track Chinese on-line activities. Cisco says that it does not customize or develop specialized or unique filtering capabilities to enable governments or regimes to block access to information and that it sells the same equipment in China as it sells worldwide
• Cisco has extended its networking technology expertise in the enterprise and service provider markets into the high-growth consumer networking market with the addition of its Linksys Division in June 2003.
• In February 2006, Cisco completed the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta of Lawrenceville, Ga., a leading global provider of set-top boxes, end-to-end video distribution networks and video systems integration. The acquisition allows Cisco to offer a world class, end-to-end data, voice, video, and mobility solution for carrier networks and the digital home
  
  
  

Yahoo.. Microsoft bid ends

Software great Microsoft said on Saturday that it had pulled its offer for Yahoo after a higher offer failed to move the internet company . This is a big blow for Microsoft as this is one time in that they have been so publicly rebuked. Microsoft had raised its bid for Yahoo to $33 per share as negotiations between the firms intensified over the weekend, but the increase had failed to win over those who hoped for an even higher bid. Yahoo had consistently rejected and earlier $31-a-share offer, with many shareholders indicating they will sell only for $35 a share. A deadline set by Microsoft for Yahoo to accept its $41.9-dollar passed April 26 with no further comment from Yahoo, had originally dismissed the bid as undervaluing the company, even though it represented a premium of 62 percent on the company's pre-offer share price.

so what are the effects that this incident have on Microsoft?
Firstly Microsoft had thought that by merging with yahoo, they could take on the Google challenge head on. but now they have to rely on their own expertise. this can actually be a blessing in disguise. haven't we read lots of stories where mergers have done nothing but bring the company down? with the different work cultures at both yahoo and MS, it would've presented a nightmarish situation for MS. Now they have to prove their supremacy with their own might. Let us wait and see how the Giant does this