Subrah Iyar

Subrah S. Iyer (b.1957) is a leading technocrat,entrepreneur and Web conferencing pioneer of Indian origin. He is the founder and CEO of WebEx which has recently merged with Cisco Systems.

Infobox Person
name = Subrah S.Iyer


caption =
birth_date = 1957
birth_place = Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
occupation = CEO, WebEx

networth = US$129 million (2000)
spouse =
children =
website =
footnotes =

Early life

Subrah S. Iyer was born and brought up in Mumbai. He had descended from Tamil immigrants who had migrated to Mumbai. He did his schooling in Mumbai and graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology. On completion of his graduation he moved to the US in the year 1982. He worked with Intel, Apple Inc., Quarterdeck, and Teleos Research prior to the establishment of WebEx.

Founding of WebEx

In his childhood days, his father had sternly warned him against dreaming of becoming an enterpreneurFact|date=October 2008. However, he overruled him when in 1996, he founded WebEx in partnership with Min Zhu.

The founding of the company by Subrah Iyar was fuelled by a new-found interest in Web Conferencing. Min Zhu, a Stanford-trained System Engineer had been struggling to develop a web-conferencing tool. Coincidentally, during this time, he befriended Subrah Iyar who was running Quarterdeck's research lab and the two formed a partnership.

Growth of WebEx

WebEx struggled to make a profit in its early days, low bandwidth being one of the main reasons. Slowly, with the advancement of technology and the shift to broadband technology, WebEx began to emerge as a potent competitor with clients such as Hoover's Online, Oracle and Tibco Software. However, despite the below par performance of Webex in its early days, it was generally a boom time for digital conferencing technology with the emergence of standards such as ISDN and Switched Digital Service. WebEx received its first funding of $25 million in December 1999.

Faced with a win or lose situation, the management of WebEx accepted the challenge with a brave heart. As a result of the new ideas propounded by Subrah Iyer, 2000 became a honeymoon year for WebEx. The revenues crossed the million mark and Subrah Iyar's own net worth rocketed from a paltry $450,000 in January 2000 to $129 million in November 2000. When enquired about it in an interview at a later stage, Subrah Iyar remarked, "It didn't get too scary, because I knew we had done everything based on fundamentals. You always have a feeling of uncertainty. But it was never a feeling of terror."

In 2003, when Microsoft purchased conferencing company Placeware it was thought to be the end of the road for Subrah Iyar and WebEx. However, WebEx survived and completed a $45 million acquisition of Intranets.com in 2005. As per the company website, more than 3.5 million people use Cisco’s WebEx products every month to communicate and collaborate online.

On March 15, 2007,Cisco Systems agreed to purchase WebEx for $3.2 billion.

See also

* WebEx
* Min Zhu

References

* [http://www.webex.com/pdf/webex_timeline.pdf History of WebEx]
* [http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3554751 Interview with Subrah Iyer]
* [http://www.cio.com/article/31398/CIO_Honorees_Innovator_s_Profile_Subrah_Iyar_of_WebEx_Communications_Inc. Profile of Subrah Iyar]
* [http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/cisco-systems-acquire-webex-32/story.aspx?guid=%7B89B3899D-BDE1-41EB-9096-B9005D3B0A6B%7D Acquisition of WebEx by Cisco Systems]
* [http://www.on24.com/index.html?id=34118&type=av&ref=bizwire ON24 Audio Investor Alert: ON24 Spotlight: WebEx CEO Subrah Iyar]
* [http://www.diehardindian.com/news/news1512.htm Profile of Subrah Iyer at diehardindian.com]