NRI, Umang Gupta couple gifts $500,000 to US history museum

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, chairman and CEO of Keynote Systems Inc

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 Gupta’s 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 didn’t follow either of his parents footsteps. He almost followed his grandfather’s 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.