Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan: A national programme to ... - Vigyan Prasar

Sabeer Bhatia
Sabeer Bhatia was born in Chandigarh on 30 December 1968. He grew
up in Bangalore and had his early education at The Bishop’s School in
Pune and then at St Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Bangalore. In 1988,
he went to the US to get a bachelor’s degree at the California Institute
of Technology after a foreign transfer from BITS Pilani, Rajasthan. He
earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Stanford
University.
After graduation, Sabeer briefly worked for Apple Computers as
a hardware engineer and Firepower Systems Inc. While working there
he was amazed at the fact that he could access any software on the
Internet via a web browser. He, along with his colleague Jack Smith, set
up Hotmail on 4 July 1996.
Into the 21st century, Hotmail became one of world’s largest
e-mail providers with over 369 million registered users. As President
and CEO, he guided Hotmail’s rapid rise to industry leadership and its
eventual acquisition by Microsoft in 1998. Bhatia worked at Microsoft
for a little over a year after the Hotmail acquisition and in April 1999,
he left Microsoft to start another venture, Arzoo Inc., an e-commerce
firm.