Tech biggies felicitated at PanIIT Conference

Asha Jadeja Motwani, carrying herself with dignity and grace, spoke only for a few minutes after receiving an award for her late husband, Rajeev Motwani, at the recent PanIIT Global Conference. But not only did she get a standing ovation, she also had to spend over an hour listening to scores of men and women who were eager to tell her that how much of an inspiration her husband was to them.

Stanford University professor and entrepreneur Motwani was known for his energy and enthusiastic support to young entrepreneurs. He was given the Lifetime Achievement at the conference.

Rajeev Motwani died in a swimming accident in late June this year in his own home near Stanford University.

Asha Motwani, who was married to Rajeev for over two decades, said it took her a few weeks to realise that he had co-founded many businesses, and she is helping them continue. She wondered how her husband, who she also described as a philosopher and interested in inner life, made time for teaching, mentoring, counseling and back up the startups.

She recited at the IIT conference, passages inspired by the Gita. She also said that her husband, who played a major role in developing Google.com, never thought that the many achievements that he had gathered in his life belonged to him entirely. Much of his inspiration came from the work he had done at IIT Kanpur, then at UC Berkeley and later Stanford.

She said chatting with a reporter that after his death she went back to India; surrounded by family members and friends and spirituality, she began the healing. "It's very reassuring about the naturalness of death, she mused in a newspaper interview, how one's purpose is to do one's duties while they are here and to live a full life.'

"People would trust him with their lives," she said at the conference. Finding funding was not an issue in Silicon Valley, Motwani used to say. He would add, Mrs. Motwani said quoting her husband: "We need passionate entrepreneurs."

Her husband believed in "bulletproof transparency," she added.

She pointed out a number of scholarships and fellowships are being named after her husband.

Before each award was presented, an IITian introduced the recipient.

The organisers brought the evening some humor when they asked entrepreneur Mohandas Warrior to introduce a recipient. It was not an easy task, he confessed, especially when the person happens to be "the only woman in your life for 30 years."

"What sets her apart (from others with tech background) is her sincerity of purpose," her husband said. "She is a great inspiration to women in technology, and the love of my life."

Padmasree Warrior has received many awards. In 2001 she was one of six women nationwide selected to receive the "Women Elevating Science and Technology" award from Working Woman Magazine and her achievements were further recognized by American Immigration Law Foundation in six years. During her tenure as CTO, Motorola she was awarded the 2004 National Medal of Technology by President George W Bush.

The IIT award meant special to her because it is given by her peers, she said, quickly talking about the foundation IIT has given her. Warrior who received a M.S. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, has a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi.

At IIT, she learned about teamwork, Warrior said; she also learned to laugh at herself, and she learned a lesson in humility.

She said when she went for the registration at IIT, she thought she was the smartest person on the planet, but after meeting a few students, she felt the campus was full of hundreds and hundreds of people who were smarter than she was.

Hardly a week goes without her name mentioned in a journal or a magazine.

"With a last name like Warrior, you expect ferociousness. In fact, Padmasree Warrior is just the opposite -- a humble leader who says she likes to play practical jokes on her staff", wrote Fast Company recently.

She worked her way up to CTO at Motorola before joining Cisco in 2007. Her ingenious approach today can best be described as holistic. For instance, one of her major projects is what Cisco calls "unified computing" -- linking all data-center resources together to make them more efficient and cost effective.

"The data center today can best be described as islands of virtualization: technical islands, procedural islands, organizational islands, operational islands," she told colleagues earlier this year. "There's no innovation in the market enabling these islands to be traversed seamlessly, securely, or simply", at the IIT conference, she declared: "I have still kept my techie roots."

Other IITian award winners at the conference held in Schaumburg, near Chicago were: Pradeep Khosla, dean, the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon (for academic excellence); Suhas Patil, chairman emeritus Cirrus Logic, for entrepreneurial achievement and Ravi Seth, president, Avaya Labs Research.