February 19, 2004
NRI Umang and his wife Ruth gave donation to the San Mateo County History
Museum, together with a $1.1-million gift from the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation. This donation will help in establishing a new gallery
called "Immigrants From Around the World".Gupta is on the
board of the museum for the past two years. Acampaign had been launched
to collect $12 million to support the capital improvement and cultural
programming and the institution is left with $2.8 million to complete
the campaign.
"This museum will tell the story of local people and first generation
immigrants to the United State. Iam happy to be involved in the project
that will tell the stories of immigrant groups that are still shaping
America.
Gupta has also been contributing money toward the Peninsula Association
of Retarded Children and Adults in memory of his son Raji, whom they
lost some time ago.
Umang Gupta knows how to navigate uncharted waters. In the 1980s, he
helped pioneer the development of the PC database--first as general
manager of Oracle Corp.'s Microcomputer Products Division.Umang Gupta
is well-known as an early Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Umang wrote the
first business plan for Oracle in 1981 and was the founder and CEO of
Gupta Corporation, the first Indian founded public software company
in the U.S.A. In addition to his professional work Gupta helped bring
the formerly host-based SQL technology to the PC, changing the way businesses
use databases and fanning the flame of client/server computing in the
late 1980s and early 1990s.
Now, as chairman and CEO of Keynote Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:KEYN),
Gupta has set his sights on a new uncharted horizon--Web site performance.
"When your business relies on E-commerce and your competitor is
only one click away, performance can make all the difference between
getting a customer and not getting a customer," he says.
From his position atop Keynote--a service that measures end-user experience
with specific Web sites on a region-by-region basis--Gupta might have
the industry's best perspective on how the Internet is performing, and
how businesses can improve their response times. In an interview, he
shared some of that perspective with InternetWeek editor at large Tim
Wilson. He has also been an active investor and advisor to a number
of Silicon Valley start-up companies and served on the board of trustees
of Mosaix, a publicly held call centre systems company, from 1997 to
1999 prior to its sale to Lucent Technologies.
Gupta at the 22, landed in Kent State University in Ohio to do is
MBA. He worked in a steel company Copperworld Steel in Ohio for a year
as a financial/systems analyst, after which he joined IBM in 1973. For
the next few years, the trajectory was very normal. Then he fell in
love with Ruth, the woman of his dreams, was British by birth and an
American citizen. He got promoted and transferred to San Francisco and
of course married Ruth.
Umang Guptas late father worked as deputy chief labour commissioner
in Labour Ministry of India. His mother was a politician who fought
notably for the rights of coal miners in Dhanbad, Bihar. Gupta grew
up with strong nationalistic feelings but didnt follow either
of his parents footsteps. He almost followed his grandfathers
into the army but at the last minute turned down an offer to join the
National Defence Academy. Instead, he joined the Indian Institute of
Technology, Kanpur where he studied chemical engineering.
Gupta has been a friend to people with developmental disabilities in
California through his organisation called PARCA. Gupta and his wife
Ruth have been the force behind PARCA, a private non-profit organisation
that serves people with developmental disabilities and their families.
Their son Raji, who was born with severe developmental disabilities,
died at the age of two in 1987. PARCA was a source of strength and comfort
for Gupta and his wife during that difficult time.The building owned
by PARCA in Burlingame to serve as a respite home for people with developmental
disabilities was named after their son's memory as Raji House.
Raji House is the only out-of-home weekend respite program for children
and teens with developmental disabilities on the peninsula. In the last
six years, 600 to 700 families have benefited from Raji House.