Abbas Sadriwala

Abbas Sadriwala is chairman and CEO of the Fort Lauderdale-based Wireless Logix Group of seven companies, which offer a full bouquet of Wi-Fi technologies and solutions.

Abbas Sadriwalla is himself of Mewari origin. Abbas' father comes from the village of Bari Sadri in the Mewar region of Rajasthan (hence the name Sadriwalla), from where he migrated to Mumbai as a penniless young lad. After working for several years with a rubber products company, he set up his own rubber firm which eventually grew into Rubber Industries India Pvt Ltd, one of the largest rubber products manufacturers in India till the 1970s

Abbas, who had to take charge of the family business at the age of 18 after his father died prematurely in 1966. But he wanted to become a pilot, and opted to move to the US in 1973 to pursue his dream, leaving the family fortune to his three siblings.

Abbas started life in the US from scratch, working in a string of shop floor jobs while financing his own pilot training. "I arrived," he remembers, "with very little money in my pocket." In 1976, he qualified as a commercial pilot and trained further to become a pilot instructor. Between 1978 and 1984, he taught flying in South Florida. Always a technology buff, Abbas spotted an opportunity to supply special purpose computers to the aviation industry in 1990 and successfully launched a company called ADS (Application Designed Systems)Associates. After speciality computers became less relevant in a rapidly changing technology marketplace, he diversified into the pager business and built a highly profitable company called Pageco International to manufacture pager crystals. As pagers were displaced by cell phones, Abbas moved into Wi-Fi technology.

Sadriwalla was named 'businessman of the year' in 2004 by the apex level National Republican Congressional Committee, in an investure presided over by US President George Bush. Sadriwalla has also been awarded The Colonel James Tod International Award by the Maharana Mewar Foundation in Udaipur.

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