Two Indian Americans have been included in the 'Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25' list released by BusinessWeek. Anand Chhatpar and Rishi Kacker were chosen to feature in the BusinessWeek Online list released last week.
Chhatpar received the honour for his work as founder and CEO of BrainReactions, a company that helps clients innovate new marketing strategies, products and services by conducting brainstorming sessions with daring and creative college students.
Kacker, a Stanford graduate, was chosen along with Matt Pauker for co-founding Voltage, an innovative company that makes security software that can encrypt documents, files, and e-mails at the touch of a button.
BrainReactions has clients such as Bank of America and the US Peace Corps in just one year of operation. Chhatpar's latest project is developing an online brainstorming tool, BrainReactions.net, which allows people to launch brainstorm sessions, invite friends or colleagues to join them share ideas and rank them, all for free.
Kacker and Pauker worked on the technology as a summer research project while attending Stanford. They toiled for about a year before entering a business-plan competition Stanford BASES Entrepreneurs Challenge, a prestigious contest in which students design and present innovative business plans.
The judges include top-tier Venture Capitalists from Silicon Valley. They won the contest beating 60 other business plans. Along with bragging rights came venture-capital interest and a year's free legal advice from the marquee law firm to Silicon Valley startups, Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati. The company received funding by top tier VC firms Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures.
With the help of some seasoned executives, the two have created a thriving security-software business with more than 130 big-business customers and 75 employees.
