Sabeer Bhatia
| Sabeer Bhatia | |
|---|---|
| Born |
30 December 1968 (age 49)[1] Chandigarh,[2] India |
| Nationality |
 |
| Alma mater |
BITS Pilani Caltech (B.S., 1989) Stanford University (M.S.) St. Joseph's Boys' High School, Bangalore (school) |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Known for | Hotmail.com |
Sabeer Bhatia (born 30 December 1968)[3] is an Indian entrepreneur who co-founded the webmail company Hotmail.com.
Career
Bhatia briefly worked for Apple Computer (as a hardware engineer) and Firepower Systems Inc. He, along with his colleague Jack Smith, set up Hotmail on 4 July 1996, American Independence Day, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world
As President and CEO, Bhatia led Hotmail until its eventual acquisition by Microsoft in 1998. Bhatia worked at Microsoft for one year after the Hotmail acquisition and in April 1999, left Microsoft to start another venture, Arzoo Inc, an e-commerce firm. In July 2011 Hotmail had 360 million registered users, less than Google's Gmail service.[4]
Bhatia started a free messaging service called JaxtrSMS. He said that JaxtrSMS would do to SMS what Hotmail did for e-mail. Claiming it to be a disruptive technology, he says that the operators will lose revenue on the reduction in number of SMSes on their network but will benefit from the data plan that the user has to buy.[5] To date, JaxtrSMS service has failed to replicate the success of Hotmail. Recently, he invested in email collaboration software, ccZen.
Personal life
Bhatia belongs to the Sindhi community.[6][7][8] His father's name is Baldev Bhatia. His father was a captain in the Indian Army and his mother worked for Central Bank of India.
Sabeer married Tanya Sharma in 2008 and the couple has a daughter together. Later, they filed for divorce in January 2013 in a court in San Francisco. The reason cited for their divorce is "irreconcilable differences". Tanya is an alumnus of the London School of Economics was the director of Good Care Pharma till 2008.
References
- ↑ Bhatia, Sabeer (10 August 2002). "Sabeer Bhatia downloaded". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 18 May 2010. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
- ↑ Gibbs, Samuel (11 April 2014). "The most powerful Indian technologists in Silicon Valley". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 April 2016. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
- ↑ Bhatia, Sabeer (10 August 2002). "Sabeer Bhatia downloaded". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 18 May 2010. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
- ↑ "How Many Email Users Are There?". About.com. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
- ↑ "AFP: Hotmail co-founder launches free SMS service". Google.com. Archived from the original on 25 November 2011. Retrieved 23 November 2011.
- ↑ Vora, Rutam (1 April 2016). "Tongue-tied in Sindhi". The Hindu. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
- ↑ Sakhrani, Tarun (4 January 2016). "The Sindhis of Sindh And Beyond". Huffington Post. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
- ↑ Pal, Joyojeet (30 May 2008). "Computers and the Promise of Development: Aspiration, Neoliberalism and 'Technolity' in India's ICTD enterprise" (PDF). University of California at Berkeley. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 April 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.