Shankar Narayanan

Shankar Narayanan is an Indian born American entrepreneur based out of United States of America and India, he is an ex-Chairman, founder and CEO of Spime Inc, a Location Technology Company acquired by Trimble, a world leader in location technology products. I Narayanan co-founded Nexus Inc, a networking solutions company based out of Fremont, California. Nexus got acquired in the year 2000. Following Nexus acquisition, he co-founded Emuzed Inc, a mobile multimedia company in 2000. Following its acquisition by Flextronics in 2005, he became the Vice President and General Manager of Flextronics Mobile Software Division. He left Flextronics to start Spime Inc, a location technology product company in 2006. He was the charter secretary of MCRT 99 of Round Table India, he was an active member and held various responsible roles at MCRT 99 of Round Table India, also he was a member of Madras Cricket Club (MCC), Chennai, India and member of Kodaikanal English Club and Kodai Golf Club.

In 2005, honoring Shankar as a successful Indian entrepreneur in the USA, Jaya TV, a leading television channel in South India, interviewed Shankar during their prime time in the morning as one of their chief guests. In 2008, he was interviewed by Kalaignar TV, a popular South Indian television channel. He has received numerous accolades, the most notable of which are the Global Youth Leadership Award (2010) and the Hind Rattan Award (2011), he received these awards at New Delhi from the Cabinet ministers of Government of India.

During May 2012, SPIME INC, a location technology company founded by Shankar Narayanan in 2006 was acquired by a multibillion-dollar United States public Company. Shankar spends his time between the US and India, continuing his passion on exploring new business initiatives and motivating, advising young entrepreneurs.

Education

Shankar attended elementary school in Usilampatti, Tamil Nadu, and St. Mary’s High School in Madurai, India. Shankar was prominent and active in theater and drama during his school life and took part in numerous plays and debates. He also was in the school’s Track, Cricket, and Badminton teams. Shankar enrolled in Palani Andawar Polytechnic in Palani and after a year transferred to Tamil Nadu Polytechic in Madurai, there he graduated with a Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and continued his Engineering studies at Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai and completed his Bachelors course in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, thereafter he completed Masters in Administration at Madurai Kamaraj University followed with Masters in Business Administration in the United States of America.

Career

In 1985 he took a job as technical staff in British Physical Laboratories, then switched to a Computer start up, Micro Advance where he gained expertise in computer hardware and software. After few years there, he then joined Aurelec Computers, one of India's first computer design companies based at Pondicherry. Following that in 1991, Shankar invested and become the founding member of Nexus Computers. At Nexus he held various positions as a leader in Management, Sales, Marketing & Support and was VP & General manager of the company. Later, he decided to pursue his passion of becoming an entrepreneur, moved to Silicon Valley, California and co-founded Nexus Inc., a networking software company based at Silicon Valley in the United States of America. Following M&A of Nexus Inc in 2000, Shankar co-founded Emuzed inc, a multimedia software company with a focus on phones and other mobile devices. Emuzed developed the world's first audio and video synchronized video recording technology for cell phones during early 2000, this technology was then licensed to numerous cell phone manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and many others. He was also instrumental in deploying the MPEG-2 encoder technology in the Personal Computers, the first Microsoft Windows-XP Media Center PCs shipped by Hewlett Packard (HP) had the MPEG-2 encoder hardware and software designed and manufactured by Emuzed. In early 2005, Flextronics, the world's largest electronic manufacturing company acquired Emuzed. Following that acquisition Shankar remained on the Flextronics Mobile and Handset division as the Vice President and General Manager until June 2006. After leaving Flextronics he continued his entrepreneurship starting his third start-up Spime Inc., a location technology company in September 2006, he derived the name 'Spime' from 'Space & Time'. He led Spime as its Chairman and CEO. Spime's location technology is licensed and deployed by Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell, Texas Instruments and few other world's tier-one mobile device and silicon manufacturers. In May 2012, Spime Inc was acquired by Trimble, a United States Public Company and the leader in providing GPS and location-based products and solutions business.

Personal life

Shankar was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu to Sowthamini a house wife and Narayanan, a police officer, Shankar was the youngest of four children. Shankar married Valsala in 1992 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The couple have two sons Vaishaal Shankar (born 1993), Vaishaal completed ( 2015 ) under-graduate in Computer Science engineering at UC Berkeley, University of California and Currently pursuing PhD in Artificial Intelligence at UC Berkeley and Vishan Shankar (born 2004), a sixth grader.

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