M A I N   N E W S

HP boy strikes goldmine in USA
From R. Suryamurthy
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Jan 10 — Two hundred dollars in his pocket and a dream to succeed was all Mr Jay Chaudhry of Una district in Himachal Pradesh, had when he left for the USA two decades ago. Today he is worth more than $ 1.4 billion and has plans to set up a multi-million dollar business in his country.

A business-to-business online auction site is one of the ventures, which he launched here today with a capital investment of $ 5 million.

Another project is the construction of a school building in his native Panoh village, 5 km from Una, where he studied under a tree.

“I used to walk nearly 4 km everyday to attend my high school at Dhusara, the neighbouring village. The school building would be donated to the government and people of my village no longer would have to walk several kilometres to study,” Mr Chaudhry told The Tribune.

He said plans were on to set up computer science colleges in Shimla and Una. “This would come up within a couple of years and the people of the state would then have more opportunities to compete,” Mr Chaudhry said.

He is also the founder president of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) — a forum which guides IT entrepreneurs to link to Angel investors and succeed with business plans.

Explaining the new venture, the country’s first business-to-business online auction site, Mr Chaudhry said “the online auctioning process cuts cycle time, overheads and transaction costs involved in disposing assets and inventory. This has a direct and positive effect on the bottomline.”