Home Participants Profiles Shri. Sabheer Bhatia

Shri. Sabheer Bhatia (India)

Co-inventor of web-based email, founder of Hotmail

Shri. Sabheer Bhatia had his first entrepreneurial ideas as teenager, when he wanted to start a sandwich bar to cater to a nearby college. She told him to forget about and focus on his studies. In 1988, at the age of 19, Bhatia landed a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology in America. After graduating with a master’s degree, he was hired by Apple Computers as a hardware engineer.

While working for Apple, Bhatia realised many untapped potential uses for the Internet, including a personal web-mail system. It wasn't much later that he founded Hotmail, the first ever web-based email system. Two years after Hotmail's inception, Microsoft bought Hotmail (from a 29-year-old Bhatia) for $400 million.

At the time of Amritavarsham50, Bhatia was now launching new ideas for e-commerce and voicemail. His dream is to wire India to create the conditions for a socio-economic revolution.