Arjun Malhotra (born 7 January 1949) is an Indian entrepreneur, industrialist and philanthropist. In 1975, Malhotra co-founded HCL Group, where he served as vice chairman. He also founded TechSpan and served as

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of US-based firm Headstrong after the two companies merged. He also co-founded

SPIC MACAY ''Spic'' (also spelled ''spick'') is an ethnic slur used in the United States for people from Latin American countries and states. Etymology Some sources from the United States believe that the word ''spic'' is a play on a Spanish-accented pro ...

along with his college friend

Kiran Seth Kiran Seth (born 1949) is an Indian academician, Professor Emeritus in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is most known as the founder of SPIC MACAY (1977), a non-profit organisation which p ...

for the promotion of Indian music and culture amongst youth.

Personal life and education

Malhotra was born to an Army man and doctor mother in 1949 in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

in a family of migrants from

Peshawar Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

and

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...

. He did his nursery schooling in Loreto which was close to his house in Park Mansions on Ripon Street, Calcutta. After his father got transferred to Delhi and passing away of his maternal grandfather, a scientist who was president of

Indian Science Congress Indian Science Congress Association(ISCA) is a premier scientific organisation of India with headquarters at Kolkata, West Bengal. The association started in the year 1914 in Kolkata and it meets annually in the first week of January. It has a ...

in 1954; the family shifted to

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

where he did his schooling in St. Columba's School and then high school from

Doon School The Doon School (informally Doon School or Doon) is a selective all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India, which was established in 1935. It was envisioned by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta, who prevised a school mode ...

Dehradun Dehradun () is the capital and the most populous city of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and is governed by the Dehradun Municipal Corporation, with the Uttarakhand Legislative As ...

. He joined IIT, Kharagpur in 1965 for his degree in Electronics and Electrical Communications. He came to

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to do Advanced Management Program at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

. He has a younger sister, who is into academics. He married his wife Kiran at 22. He has a son Shiven Malhotra (b.1974) and daughter Poorva (b.1977). He shuttles between

and

Saratoga, California Saratoga is a city in Santa Clara County, California. Located in Silicon Valley, in the southern Bay Area, its population was 31,051 at the 2020 census. Saratoga is an affluent residential community, known for its wineries, restaurants, and attra ...

Career

Malhotra started his career in 1970, when he joined

Delhi Cloth Mills DCM Textiles, formerly known as Delhi Cloth & General Mills (founded in 1889 by Rai Bahadur Ram Kishen Das Gurwale), is an Indian conglomerate which was initially a textile business which opened its first mill in Delhi. Starting from late 1980s ...

as Senior Management Trainee. In 1972 along with Shiv Nadar he was assigned to set up marketing division for DCM Data Patterns to sell pocket

calculators An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-size ...

. In 1975, he quit DCM and partnered with

Shiv Nadar Shiv Nadar (born 14 July 1945) is an Indian billionaire industrialist and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman emeritus of HCL Enterprise, HCL Technologies Limited and the Shiv Nadar Foundation. Nadar founded HCL in the mid-1970s and ...

Ajai Chowdhry Ajai Chowdhry (born 29 August 1950) is one of the six founding members of HCL (Hindustan Computers Limited). He is currently the Chairman-Board of Governors at National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology (NIFFT), Ranchi, International In ...

, D.S. Puri, Yogesh Vaidya and Subhash Arora to set up a company known as Microcomp Limited, which sold digital calculators, eventually becoming its Vice Chairman. Microcomp created a joint sector company named Hindustan Computers Limited and began manufacturing mini and microcomputers. He led the company's

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

with

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

in India and also companys

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

business operations. He took over HCL's US operation in 1989. Malhotra, along with Sandeep Sahai, Nagesh Mehra, Puneet Pushkarna, Aloke Paskar, Curt Terwilliger, Harsh Lohit, Adarsh Mehra, and Bonnie Singh started his IT consulting company TechSpan in 1998 with funding from

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

and Walden. He later merged the company with IT services company Headstrong in 2003, and became that company's CEO. HeadStrong was later acquired by

Genpact Genpact is an American professional services firm legally domiciled in Bermuda with its headquarters in New York City, New York. The company currently employs more than 100,000 people and provides services to clients in over 30 countries worldwi ...

for US$550 million in 2011. Malhotra was described by Business Today as a "serial technology entrepreneur" who "was ahead of the learning curve" with each of his companies. He setup Magic Software, a software company in 2011. He serves as director for various other companies including Lumis Partners, Evolko Inc, Mapmygenome and Number Theory Software, an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

solution provider. He is Chairman of Board of Vision 2020, an IIT Alumni lead initiative to help IIT raise endowment funds. He is on Board of Governors of IIT - Foundation (Kharagpur),

Indian School of Business The Indian School of Business (ISB) is a private business school established in India in 2001. It has two parallel campuses in India, in Hyderabad (Telangana) and Mohali (Punjab). It offers certificates in various post-graduate management prog ...

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

, IIM Udaipur,

IIM Shillong Indian Institute of Management Shillong (IIM Shillong or IIM-S) is a public, fully autonomous management institute in the city of Shillong, Meghalaya. It was the seventh Indian Institute of Management to be established in India. Established in ...

. member of Indian Public Schools Society that runs the Doon School. He is also Executive Council member of

NASSCOM The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) is an Indian non-governmental trade association and advocacy group, focused mainly on the technology industry of India. Established in 1988, NASSCOM is a non-profit organis ...

Philanthropy

Malhotra founded Prof G S Sanyal School of Telecommunications and Prof M N Faruqui Center for Innovation at IIT (Kharagpur). He also co-founded

along with his college friend

for the promotion of Indian music and culture amongst youth.

Awards and honors

* Malhotra was awarded the Albert Einstein Technology Medal in 2001. * In 2003, he was named a Life Fellow by

IIT Kharagpur Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) is a public institute of technology established by the Government of India in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. Established in 1951, the institute is the first of the IITs to be established ...

, and later awarded the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by the university in 2012. * In 2013, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Punjab Technical University. * Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. * Malhotra was hosted by

IIT Bhubaneswar Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar (IIT Bhubaneswar) is a public technical university established by the government of India in 2008, located at Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. The institute admits a students for bachelor's, master's progra ...

for motivational talk on "E-Day" on 17 September 2018. * Dr. B.C. Roy Gold Medal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Malhotra, Arjun IIT Kharagpur alumni Living people 1949 births Businesspeople in software Indian chief executives Indian billionaires 20th-century Indian businesspeople Businesspeople from Kolkata The Doon School alumni