October 07, 2000

Washington: A Washington, D.C.-based club of Indian-born chief executive officers (CEOs) has teamed up with a Silicon Valley-headquartered network of Indian- American entrepreneurs in a bid to become a force to reckon with in the information technology (IT)-driven economy.

The Indian CEO High Tech Council (ICEO) will become the D.C. (District of Columbia) chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) under the tie-up launched during the former's first annual conference here.

ICEO is one of the largest and fastest growing entrepreneurial organizations on the east coast and TiE, which has 10 chapters in the U.S. and five in India, is a west coast-based global network of entrepreneurs originating from the Indus region.

At the conference titled "ICEO Entrepreneurship 2000--The Quality Standard," held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel last month, the affiliation was officially launched in the presence of some members of the TiE hierarchy and more than 400 leading Indian American entrepreneurs and wannabes seeking venture capital, advice and networking opportunities.

They included founding member and former president Suhas Patil and key players such as A.J.Patel, president of Odyssey Enterprises, and Nitin Mehta, president HIM Group, who were in agreement that the linkage between ICEO and TiE in more ways than one was a case of "East meets West."

Sanju Bansal, the chief operating officer of MicroStrategy Inc., who co-founded ICEO with Reggie Aggarwal, the chief executive officer of cvent.com, declared how excited he was to finally have ICEO link up with TiE and predicted that both organizations working together would be a force to reckon with in the burgeoning IT- driven new economy.

Aggarwal spoke of how ICEO had been working on the merger with TiE for quite some time.

Shruthi Reddy, ICEO's executive director, pointed out that both organizations shared the same "fundamental philosophy of promoting entrepreneurship and mentorship," and predicted that "working together, the two organizations will leverage one another's extensive networks and share best practices for mentoring entrepreneurs."

She declared, "together, they have set a new standard in the name of entrepreneurship", and added the alliance was "a special moment for both ICEO and TiE, but more importantly for all pioneers in business and technology."

According to Reddy, the link-up could only result in a win-win situation since TiE's global reach and presence and the fact that it was filled with the real heavyweights in the IT sector in Silicon Valley would necessarily boost ICEO's credibility and clout even further. The group would now be known as the Indian CEO High Tech Council D.C. Chapter of TiE (ICEO-TiE,D.C.), Reddy said.

TiE president-elect Kailash Joshi said since ICEO was well established in the Washington area and had a large membership, it made perfect sense for TiE to merge with it since the objectives of both organizations are similar and so are the activities and values.

"More generally, ICEO will continue its exclusive networking receptions with the same frequency and degree to serve this peer group of top entrepreneurs," Reddy said.

She said ICEO had also "increased our programming, with the latest being our launch of our Mentorship Pillar, and we will continue to hot open networking receptions for emerging entrepreneurs."