India-American Asa Kalavade raised $8 million for her recent merger in 2011 between Umber Systems and Ground Truth that will enhance the market research in the wireless industry, BostInno.com reported. Kalavade was one of the very few women to start her own technology company 20 years ago.
In an interview with American Made, a study on the impact of immigrants to the American economy, Kalavade commented that in India when she started studying engineering “people came to my parents to talk them out of it, never mind starting my own company. Kalavade came to the USA as an international student and she received both a Master’s and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Talking about her university days, Kalavade said that all the top immigrant students “came here (U.S.) for the opportunity.”
Early in her career, Kalavade worked at Bell Labs and invented patent-pending technologies for wireless multimedia streaming, network interfaces, and real-time multiprocessor DSP (digital signal processing) systems. She served as vice president of Technology at Savos and later founded Tatara Systems along with another immigrant from China.
In 2007, Kalavade was named one Top 10 “Women to Watch” by Mass High Tech, the journal of New England technology. Two years ago, Kalavade founded Umber, a mobile data analytics company. She holds 10 patents and has been published in numerous international conferences and journals.
