Four Indian Americans figure in Inc. magazine’s list of “30 Under 30: America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs” who are “building unique brands, making money along the way and changing the way we do business”.
Some, like Naveen Sevadurai, 28, who co-founded Foursquare, run one of the hottest tech startups in the world, while others run companies just now getting noticed, says the monthly US business magazine.
Three other Indian Americans in the list are Vikas Reddy, 26, who co-founded technology start-up ‘Occipital’, Sachin Agarwal, 30, of San Francisco-based start up ‘Posterous’ and 22-year old Stanford graduate Ooshma Garg, who found job finding site ‘Anapata’.
“For them, building a business is not a lone pursuit, but rather an extension of their social lives,” says Inc.
“In fact, if there’s one thing that stands out about this year’s coolest young entrepreneurs, it’s that their generational fascination with all things social extends deeply into their entrepreneurial zeitgeist,” it says.
“Simply put, they are growing their companies by building communities,” the magazine says of the 49 on the list.
Selvadurai’s company which has raised $20 million in venture capital recently “has already found two primary revenue streams: big brands such as Starbucks and The New York Times sponsor content, while local businesses use the app to offer deals to lure in nearby users.”
Posterous co-founded by Agarwal with Garry Tan takes all the fuss out of posting content online. “Their concept for Posterous is decidedly simple: E-mail, its founders believe, is the gateway for sharing information-text, photos, and videos-online.”
Reddy and Jeffrey Powers co-founded Occipital, a technology start-up that has developed RedLaser, a best-selling iPhone app that lets users scan barcodes. Since debuting in May 2009, RedLaser has been downloaded more than two million times, making it one of the most popular paid-iPhone apps in the market.
The company recently sold RedLaser to eBay and used the proceeds from the deal to hire three engineers who are now working on “developing more cool products”.
Garg named her Palo Alto start-up Anapata after a Swahili word that means “find, attain, and achieve.”
Garg charges law firms an annual subscription fee of between $2,500 and $20,000 for access to her database of job seekers, which she collects by partnering with student organizations such as the Latino Pre-Law Society and the Black Law Students Association.