Sanchaita Datta, chief technology officer, vice president and co-founder of Fatpipe Networks in Salt Lake City, Utah, has won the Young Women's Christian Association's Outstanding Achievement Award for Business and Industry.
Datta accepted the award in September at the YWCA's 2009 21st annual Leader Luncheon at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, attended by more than 1,000 business and community leaders.
'We are proud to honour Sanchaita for her outstanding accomplishments
and for her commitment to strengthening the lives of women and girls here and abroad,' said Anne Burkholder, chief executive officer, YWCA-Salt Lake City.
"I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had been selected as the winner," Datta said. "It's such an honuor and also so humbling to be thought of as a role model for other women in science, technology and business. Moving forward, my objective will be to continue to endeavour to keep up the momentum of Fatpipe as a leader in inventing and delivering innovative technology products and services for companies that require the highest levels of Internet/WAN [wide area network] reliability and business continuity."
Datta, who was also selected for her philanthropy and for supporting education of girls and women in the local community and in India, said, "This will also continue to be one of my priorities as I have been doing this for the past 16 years contributing to the Foundation for Women's Education in India."
The Foundation, she explained, promotes and supports education for young girls and women of Benaras, Uttar Pradesh from grade school right up to a master's degree. "This has been such a motivating force for meto help women from rural India so they can also have the opportunities that I had in life."
Datta co-founded FatPipe Networks with her husband Dr Ragula Bhaskar, the president and CEO of the company that invented a router technology for mission-critical Web applications for business.
Datta was the first recipient of the 2008 Technology Innovator Award among the Women Tech Awards presented by Utah's Women Tech Council. She was also a recipient of Connect magazine's 2006 Reader's Choice Award as being among the 'Twenty People Who Most Influenced Business in Utah,' and was also selected as one of Utah's top female executives by Utah Business magazine and listed in its 30 Women to Watch.
Datta was born and raised in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, while Bhaskar was born and raised in Chennai. They met as students at Pennsylvania State University. Datta is currently a post graduate student in electrical engineering at the University of Utah.
Image: Sanchaita Datta speaks at the awards ceremony.
