BIO
Mr. Ahuja was born and raised in India and earned a BS in mechanical
engineering degree from Chandigarh's Punjab Engineering College
before emigrating to the United States in 1969. He earned an MS
in mechanical engineering at The Ohio State University in 1970
and an MBA at Cleveland State University.
Manmohan Ahuja had torn himself away in 1968 from a close-knit
family of seven sisters and a brother to catch a Swiss Air flight
from Bombay, $ 12 in his wallet and admission to a mechanical
engineering program at Ohio State University in a folder.
The connecting flight from Zurich developed trouble and landed
in Athens, from where a Greek airline took him to Frankfurt, from
where he was tossed over to London and finally landed in New York
where a snowstorm held him up. He arrived in Columbus, Ohio five
days after he left home to find that his host had left a message
asking him to find his own way to an address near OSU.
"I left on December 23 and arrived on December 28 during
a bitterly cold winter and wondered where have I come to,"
he recalled in an interview. But it was a country, a society and
a system that embraced him warmly thereafter.
He earned money installing gas grills while still at school, found
a job in an auto company when he was still graduating, and went
on to do an MBA from CSU, parlaying his master's thesis there
into Transtar Industries, an automotive and transmission parts
firm founded on a shoestring and staff of two.
Cleveland's gain is Chandigarh's loss. Ahuja still has family
-- mother and four sisters in Panchkula -- and visits home at
least twice a year. "I don't think they have a concept of
seeking out alumni like in US... there is no endowment and no
fund-raising," he lamented, when asked if he had considered
similar contributions to his college in India, which is also the
alma mater of the late astronaut Kalpana Chawla.
While in college, Mr. Ahuja met his future wife, Usha. A gold
medalist for mathematics in India, Mrs. Ahuja was in the United
States obtaining her PhD. She taught mathematics at several universities
for nearly 20 years while also serving as a business partner and
confidante to her husband. Mrs. Ahuja is currently a member of
the UH Board’s Development Committee, and she has been instrumental
in coordinating many events that support UH.
Mr. and Mrs. Ahuja have two daughters, Ritu and Manisha –
who is married to Neil Sethi – and a grandchild, Rohan.
