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Manpreet Khaira: taking Mobilian to enviable heights

Ela Dutt
India Abroad Correspondent in Washington

Manpreet Khaira (35) founder, chairman, president and CEO of Mobilian Wireless Systems Company, likes to excel.

He won the distinguished President of India Gold Medal for academic excellence when he graduated in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

While at Intel, he became one of the youngest principal engineers in that company's history, the highest technical rank prior to being a Fellow. He earned his MS in Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University and has seven patents to his credit and a score of publications.

He just accomplished what is nowadays considered an enviable feat for most IT companies - raising $35 million in his latest funding round.

Right now, he told India Abroad, he is busy building a strong IP portfolio for Mobilian, a wireless systems company that designs and develops analogue and digital integrated circuits and host and embedded software for standards-based wireless data communications

The Jalandhar-born Khaira, founded Mobilian in 1999, with a vision of what he calls True Connectivity.

"It's a very simple idea - if you carry any computing or communication device to a certain place, the device can detect all wireless connectivity and get basically seamless connectivity without your knowing about it. We take all that away from the user and leave it to the device to figure all that out."

He says he founded Mobilian while trying to figure out his own dilemma - of whether to be a 'techie' or a manager. "I decided I wanted to do both. The only way was to run my own show."

Khaira is recognised as somewhat of an expert in VLSI design and management. Prior to founding Mobilian, he was principal engineer and director of an advanced design technology group at Intel.

He founded the group in 1994, when he was 28, and is credited with growing it to what he says was one of the largest and most prolific advanced design technology groups in the industry.

He invented the Technology Maturity Model and built a management system around it to enable rapid conversion of technology to products.

Khaira said that he began his career in the Intel super computer systems division where he developed validation and verification technologies to reduce the number of steps for chipsets to get to high-volume manufacture.

He then joined the scalable systems division, where he was responsible for design management positions of increasing responsibility for interconnect/networking chipsets for high-end servers, including the one used in the Teraflops machine. In addition, he established a new system to automate the management of chip-design operations.

He is also chairman of the board for TrueDisk.com and advisor to several other startups.

On the cusp of releasing its first product - TrueRadio -- where the device auto detects, selects and connects, Khaira said, "Our first two rounds of financing have allowed us to build an impressive team and develop our first product, TrueRadio. This round will allow Mobilian to bring TrueRadio to market, and is the first major step in the company's vision of TrueConnectivity, to enable computing and communication devices to automatically detect wireless networking opportunities, select the best ones, and connect seamlessly and reliably."

The company believes its unique architecture will enable wireless local area and personal area networking technologies to become pervasive over the next few years. Its product roadmap coupled with its expertise in designing multi-standard, interference tolerant radios will result in greatly improved user experiences with wireless networking technologies, for consumers and enterprises alike, the management contends.

Mobilian investors in the latest round include Bessemer Ventures, Raza Venture Fund A, JAFCO, Dell Ventures, SBV Venture Partners.

"Having the opportunity to invest in a strong management team focused on a value-added solution to a real problem combined with a proven ability to deliver was very important to us." said Todd Dow, Principal, Dell Ventures.

Since its founding in February 1999, Mobilian has raised over $60 million in funding. It boasts a strong management team drawn from Qualcomm and Intel, blending wireless communications innovations with expertise in high volume integrated circuit design and manufacturing.

The company operates out of three sites -- Hillsboro, Or., San Diego, Ca., and Yoqne'am, Israel.

Khaira, an avid flyer who has logged 220 hours on Cessna 172s, is married to Anu and has two children, Maneet (4), and Aanya (1).

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