PDF: 2962 pages, 5.2 MB - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

Global Reach
Back in the Bay Area, two brothers, tech entrepreneurs Anil and Gautam Godhwani,
have built the nation’s largest Indian Community Center (ICC) in Milpitas. Gautam, a
UC Berkeley engineering graduate, and Anil, who holds a B.A. in economics from UC
Santa Barbara, held positions at AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and IBM during the 1990s before
starting their own website maintenance company, AtWeb. After Netscape acquired AtWeb for
$95 million in 1998, Gautam served as a director of Netscape and AOL for two years, and then
the brothers took a year off to travel in Asia, Europe and India. It had been their first time back
since emigrating with their parents to the U.S. in 1981.
Returning to the Bay Area in 2001, the Godhwanis found the tech industry in a downturn and a
community in need. An older generation of Indian émigrés—those who came in the 1960s and
1970s, and parents or extended family members brought over by working professionals—found
themselves isolated from both children working long hours and from their cultural traditions.
Young people often had little or no connection to their community and needed a safe place to go
with friends after school or in the evenings. New arrivals needed help getting driver’s licenses,
opening bank accounts, renting apartments and getting legal or medical referrals.
Typically, Indian immigrants had relied in the past on their temples to provide language and
dance classes, lunches, weekend outings and help getting settled in the U.S., but the temples were
reliant on limited funding and volunteers. The Godhwanis realized that as long as services were
fragmented among Hindus, Jains, Telugu and other sects, the overall wealth of the Indian community
was not being properly leveraged. One early decision in designing the Indian Community
Center was to avoid divisive religious, partisan political or sectarian issues.
The brothers began with $200,000 of their own money and first teamed with the existing Indo-
American Community Service Center (ICSC), which had been connected with the Hindu Temple
in Sunnyvale and was housed in a 1,200-square foot space belonging to TiE. They looked to the
Jewish Community Center (JCC), YMCA and United Way as models, rented a 20,000-square foot
facility in 2003, hired full-time professional staff, and recruited from the corporate and outside
non-profit worlds for their board (Board members have included JCC executive director Nate
Levin, former Brocade Communications chief technology officer Kumar Malavalli, Intel enterprise
processing division senior director Bala Joshi, and Google senior research scientist Vibhu Mittal.)
With a $3.85 million loan from Wells Fargo Bank and a number of $1 million donations from
wealthy individuals in the community, ICC opened a new, 40,000-square foot center in Milpitas
in 2007. The Center today has more than 1,500 paying members, 200 volunteers and a small paid
staff. It offers a fitness and wellness center and classes in yoga, Bollywood dancing, music, martial
arts, art, and college test preparation, that are open to the broad local community. ICC also
hosts a table tennis league, children’s story time, karaoke night, career counseling, pro bono legal
assistance, a free medical clinic, and a lecture series featuring a wide range of authors, academics
and civic leaders. A seniors program offers a platform for socialization, lunches, outings, mahjongg,
and yoga and wellness classes. A new satellite center for seniors has opened in rented
space in Cupertino, and ICC has expanded to serve the greater Bay Area Indo-American
population by partnering with community centers in Fremont, Saratoga and other cities. By
networking with some 70 community and professional organizations, ICC has provided a focal
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