4 Indian Americans among ‘coolest young entrepreneurs’

4 Indian Americans among ‘coolest young entrepreneurs’

BOSTON: Four Indian-Americans have been named among 30 of America’s “coolest young entrepreneurs” by monthly business magazine ‘Inc’ that describes its young achievers as people who are “building unique brands, making money along the way and changing the way we do business”.

Naveen Selvadurai, 28, co-founder of social networking app ‘Foursquare’, 26-year old Vikas Reddy who co-founded technology start-up ‘Occipital’, Sachin Agarwal, 30 of San Francisco-based start up ‘Posterous’ and 22-year old Stanford graduate Ooshma Gar g have been named in the ‘30 under 30’ 2010 list of ‘America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs’ by the New York based magazine.

“They are bringing innovation to market, building unique brands, nurturing trends, giving back and making money along the way,” Inc says of the young men and women on its list.

Selvadurai, a former software architect, co-founded Foursquare in 2009. Foursquare is a mobile application that is a “friend-finder, a social city guide as well as a game”.

With more than two million users, the business is currently valued at nearly $100 million. The start-up is still growing steadily by 100,000 new members a week, with plans for a big redesign soon.

“We are all obsessed with what we want to build and think about it all day long. If you are really excited about a redesign and only half way there, you go to sleep and dream about the rest of it,” says the New York based entrepreneur.

Inc says a “defining characteristic” of this generation of entrepreneurs is that they are highly likely to start companies with partners.

“For them, building a business is not a lone pursuit, but rather an extension of their social lives”. Another thing that stands out about this year’s young entrepreneurs is that their “generational fascination with all things social extends deeply into t heir entrepreneurial zeitgeist,” the magazine adds.

Reddy co-founded Occipital, a technology start-up in Colorado in 2008. The business 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”. In 2009, Occipital earned $1 million in revenues and is targeting $2.5 million this year. - PTI