Indian entrepreneurs in Canada
Mining a high-tech passage from India
The subcontinent is pumping out thousands of brilliant technology graduates -- and the Lower Mainland is cashing in on their savvy and expertise, writes JANE ARMSTRONG
From his office in Yaletown -- the epicentre for all that is novel and trendy in Vancouver -- Rizwan Kheraj is playing with his cellphone and musing about the entrepreneurial personality.
His metallic blue phone is also a camera and he's snapping photos, which can be packaged with the ringtone du jour to send in an e-mail. The end product -- a multimedia medley of music and colour images -- makes a regular e-mail look as arcane as a letter with a stamp.
Mr. Kheraj is the chief operating officer for Mobile Operandi, a 2-½-year-old startup with a patented software (called mophone) that combines picture and text messaging with music.
Mophone stores the images and music on a desktop. The remote control for directing these musical missives is the cellphone -- a device Mr. Kheraj says is vastly underused.
Mr. Kheraj has dedicated his career to easing the often-testy relations between humans and their increasingly complicated gadgets. And he hopes mophone, which is aimed at tech-receptive youths, will grab for Mobile Operandi a piece of the $50-billion text-messaging market.
At 49, Mr. Kheraj's career trajectory has followed a path familiar to many B.C. entrepreneurs of Indian descent.
After years of intensive study and more time honing his skills at larger companies, it's time to roll out his own ideas.
He is not alone.
Scores of first- and second-generation engineers and MBAs of Indian origin inhabit the corner offices of Vancouver's burgeoning high-tech sector, mimicking demographic trends in every IT hub in the world -- from the United Kingdom and Australia to California's Silicon Valley.
In British Columbia, Indo-Canadian immigrants have traditionally made their mark in farming, forestry and the construction industry. Now, second-generation Indo-Canadians are gravitating to the technology and finance sectors, says Randy Garg, president of the Vancouver chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a professional association started in the early 1990s by Indian techies living in Silicon Valley. The group, now a worldwide networking association, encourages members to launch their own companies and invest in each other's ideas.
"We're seeing a lot more entrepreneurs of Indian origin getting into high-tech," Mr. Garg says. "With more opportunities to receive advanced education, some go back to run the family business, others go out on their own."
Among other things, Indian high-tech prowess is the product of top-notch engineering institutions, namely the renowned India Institute of Technology. Until recent years, business opportunities in India were limited, forcing hundred of thousands to search for careers abroad, contributing to the cryptic phrase in India that "Indians have helped develop every country in the world except India."
In the United States, it's estimated that Indian entrepreneurs have helped start hundreds of high-tech companies since 1992, generating more than $200-billion in value. TiE now has 42 chapters around the world.
Mr. Kheraj says the success of Indian expatriates is a combination of factors, from high-quality schooling to culture that puts a premium on marketing one's own ideas.
"We are merchants," says Mr. Kheraj, whose father ran a textile company in Tanzania. "Merchants are used to starting a business and running a business. At the heart of any merchant is an entrepreneur."
Mr. Kheraj moved to Canada as a teenager. After obtaining at PhD in organizational behaviour from Queen's University, he worked at Telus and MPR, the now-defunct research and development arm of BC Tel.
But the end goal was never to land a company job for life.
"Getting a job at a company is . . . like you're not capable of doing anything yourself. Why should you start with that assumption?" he asks.
"In my own case . . . my father was an entrepreneur with tiles and built a factory. So it was very natural when I came out of school that I wasn't thinking that I should go work for IBM."
Across town, in a towering downtown office building, Gurmit Dhaliwal, says -- without hesitation -- that Indian high-tech know-how is among the best in the world.
Mr. Dhaliwal's company, Geotech Systems Inc., has recruited about 50 engineers from India since its inception 10 years ago.
Canada, he says, simply doesn't produce enough engineers to keep up with demand. India, with a population of 1.1-billion people, graduates hundreds of thousands each year.
"The people are hardworking, they're bright and they're dedicated, which are the qualities we all look for in employees," says Mr. Dhaliwal, who moved to Canada with his parents at age 11 from India's northern Punjab province.
He predicts that it will get tougher in the future to lure top talent from India. Over the past decade, many of the Indians who left to work abroad have returned to invest in Indian companies. The country has also become the world hub for customer call centres, fuelling a middle-class expansion.
"India is the software powerhouse right now, primarily because they've built their technology," Mr. Dhaliwal says. "If you have a software that's made in India, you know it's good."
He says that half of Geotech's software, which is managed and sold from his offices in Vancouver and Bellevue, Wash., was developed in India. Eventually, he predicts, software support and maintenance will be handled out of India.
For his part, Mr. Kheraj thinks Canada could do a better job instilling entrepreneurial values in the public school system and post-secondary institutions.
"There's nothing wrong with getting a job, for picking up skills which you may not have," Mr. Kheraj says. "But a lot of people get a job, get promoted and lose sight of what they wanted to do in the first place."
posted by India News Watch at 9:45 AM
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