Kumar Malavalli | |
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Born | |
Alma mater | National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, India Cal State East Bay Honorary Doctorate of Science |
Occupation(s) | Chairman of C3DNA Inc. Co-founder, CTO Brocade Communications |
Board member of | Glassbeam, Inc. AlephCloud C3DNA Inc. |
Spouse | Vijayalakshmi Malavalli |
Children | Ranjini Malavalli |
Father | Narayanaswamy Malavalli |
Relatives | Dr. Seetharam Malavalli Dr. Shivaram Malavalli |
Kumar Malavalli is an Indian American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] In 1995, he founded Brocade Communications Systems with Paul Bonderson Jr. He currently serves as chairman of C3DNA Inc. and as a partner at VKRM Services, a boutique investment firm. [2] [7] He has also served on the boards of the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Fibre Channel Industry Association. [10] [11]
Malavalli was presented with an honorary doctor of science degree by California State University, East Bay in 2013. [7] The Kumar Malavalli Endowed Chair in Storage Systems Research at the University of California Santa Cruz's Jack Baskin School of Engineering was established in 2004 following a $1 million donation from Malavalli. [7] [12] [13] Professor Darrell Long currently holds the Kumar Malavalli Chair. [13]
Malavalli is a member of the Silicon Valley Hall Engineering Hall of Fame. [6] [14]
Malavalli was born in early March 1943 in Mysore, Karnataka, India.[ citation needed ] He moved to Düsseldorf, Germany in 1972 following his graduation from the National Institute of Engineering with a bachelor's degree in engineering. [12] After graduating from the Institute of Engineering in Düsseldorf with a master's degree in industrial electronics, Malavalli moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. [12]
In Toronto, Malavalli worked for Canstar Communications’ fibre channel group, which was later acquired by Hewlett-Packard. [12] While at Hewlett-Packard, he served on American National Standards Institute's T11 Technical Committee, which established universal standards for fibre channel. [10] [13] [15]
Malavalli co-founded Brocade Communications, a producer of storage area networks, with Paul Bonderson, Jr. in 1995. [1] [3] [4] [16] Brocade launched in 1998 and went public in May 1999, and its CEO was convicted for illegal backdating of options in January 2008.[ citation needed ] In addition to being a co-founder, Malavalli served as CTO of Brocade. [17]
In 2001, Malavalli co-founded InMage, an independent software company. [2] [9] [17]
He was awarded the International Committee for Information Technology Standards’ 2002 Gene Milligan Award for his work chairing an INCITS committee, which developed 17 standards for storage area networks. [10] [18] [19]
In 2003, Malavalli became the first Indian member of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. [6] [14]
Malavalli co-founded Glassbeam, a software-as-a-service vendor, in 2009 with Puneet Pandit. [20] He also serves as chairman of the company. [20]
Malavalli was appointed InMage CEO in 2011. [2] [9]
Other companies whose boards Malavalli has served on include CryptoMill Technologies and LeadFormix (then-known as LeadForce1). [21] [22] He was also an investor in Edurite Technologies, which was later acquired by Pearson Education. [23] [24]
In 2004, Malavalli donated $1 million toward the creation of the University of California at Santa Cruz’s endowed Kumar Malavalli Chair in Storage Systems Research. [7] [12] [13] He is also a benefactor of Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, with donations totaling over $500,000. [25]
Malavalli is a co-founder and trustee of the Indus Trust, which builds schools that are not affordable by the middle class population of India. [4] [8] [15] Hindu BL, The Indus Trust is headed by Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray. [4] [8] [15] [26] He is also the principle investor of TeleVital, a company that provides telemedicine services to rural areas in India. [1] [27]
Malavalli is the chairman and a funder of the India Community Center in Milpitas, California. [5] [28] [29] He also serves as a trustee of the American India Foundation and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. [12] [30] [31] He sits on the board of The Indus Entrepreneurs’ Silicon Valley Chapter and the San Francisco-Bangalore Sister City Initiative. [13] [32] [33]
In 2013, Malavalli was awarded the Immigrant Heritage Award for his philanthropic work in the United States and India. [34]