Annasha

Clearwater Analytics – Modern World’s Accounting Solution.

Clearwater Analytics is a fintech company based in Idaho, United States. The company was founded in 2004 and is currently led by Sandeep Sahai, the present CEO. Being one of the most trusted companies for advanced accounting solutions with investment data aggregation and much more to provide, the company has received several awards. The company’s primary customers are asset managers, big and small insurance companies, multinational corporations and banks, government bodies, and many other institutions. There are approximately 2,000 employees in this company who are working from offices situated in London, India, USA, and Scotland. The company has such a vast network that it reports more than $5.9 trillion in assets on a daily basis across thousands of accounts.

Story Of Clearwater Analytics

Back in 2004, Clearwater Analytics was founded by David Boren, Michael Boren, and Douglas Bates. Before founding this company, these three co-founders established Clearwater Advisors, an institutional fixed-income investment advisor. After this advisor body was established, the three of them eventually landed on the concept of Clearwater Analytics. After the company was established in 2004, it eventually started expanding both in terms of its client diversity as well as geography. Clearwater Analytics has multiple offices in Europe and a few years back decided to invest heavily in the Indian market. For the impressive solutions offered by the company, it has received the Innovative Company of the Year award in 2012 from the Idaho Innovation Awards.

By the end of 2013, the company entered into a partnership with Gardner Co. to help the company finance a nine-story building. The construction of this Clearwater building was completed after three years. In 2013, the company was also named Technology Firm of the Year by Captive Review. In 2019, the company received two awards in a row, Technology Firm of the Year at the Insurance Asset Management Awards and Best Software Solution at the UK & European Captive Review Awards, respectively. As the company has reported over $5.5 trillion in investment assets, it is clear that it has several high-profile clients. Some of them are J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Cisco, Oracle, and Facebook.

Entering The Indian Market

It was in 2019 that the company announced that it will enter the Indian market. Its plan was to invest $25 million in the next three years. The company made a plan to invest this amount in National Capital Region (NCR) by March 2020 and decided to bring 200 professionals on board. Currently, the company has its office in Noida, India.

Sandeep Sahai – CEO

Sandeep Sahai is the present CEO of the company and he is holding this position for the last four years. After Sandeep became the CEO of the company, Clearwater Analytics flourished in the targeted global markets and also expanded in its core industries. It is under his supervision that the company has ten offices presently across six different companies. Moreover, he also led Clearwater Analytics to its IPO in the fall of 2021. Now, it is a publicly-traded company under the ticker CWAN. Sandeep is an alumnus of IIT Varanasi and IIM Calcutta. Apart from playing his role in several executive positions in various global companies, he also founded a consulting firm called TechSpan. And, prior to joining Clearwater Analytics, he was the CEO of Headstrong.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Behringer – Uli Behringer’s Story Of Creating A Successful Musical Business.

Founded in 1989, Behringer is one of the most successful pro-audio companies in the world. The company’s founder is Uli Behringer, a Swiss engineer who hailed from a musical background. Behringer originally started its manufacturing unit in Willich, Germany and it has a worldwide network serving up to 130 countries. Currently, the musical products of this company are manufactured in China. Behringer’s parent company is Music Tribe, a holding company that the founder of Behringer chairs. The company has approximately 3,500 employees working from various parts of the world. Behringer is not only successful but one of the largest musical companies in the world and in 2017 it ranked 14th in terms of manufacturing capacity.

The Musical Journey Of Uli Behringer

Uli Behringer is originally from Switzerland where he was born in a little town in 1961. His father was a nuclear physicist and a church organist while his mother was into music and played piano. Behringer’s journey into the musical world started with his mother teaching him to play piano at the age of four. His family had a rich musical background and his aunt and uncle were also into music. After a year of learning piano, Behringer’s father built him a church organ with 1000 pipes and it was integrated into the family home. At the age of sixteen, he constructed a synthesizer.

Building A Musical Startup

As Behringer started growing up, he showed interest in music as well as electronics. So, in 1982 he moved to Dusseldorf, Germany to study classical piano and sound engineering. In the late 1980s, psychoacoustics became a very hyped topic in the audio world as manufacturers were looking for solutions for processing compromised audio. It was Uli Behringer who decided to lift up the curtain between an affordable solution and the audience who are in need of it. So, in 1989 the company’s story actually began as Behringer started implementing his ideas in reality. He wanted to offer the solutions at a price that his audience (independent musicians or other studios) can easily purchase. With Behringer, a new home-recording market started that the world didn’t witness before.

Manufacturing And Marketing

After Behringer was incorporated in 1989, the company started its production in Germany although some of the major components were shipped from mainland China. But it was only after a year that the company shifted its manufacturing process to China to reduce the entire production cost. As the company started manufacturing various musical equipment that was in demand, its main target was to produce the same at a lower price. So, in 1991, the company manufactured COMBINATOR MDX 8000 at a much lower price.

After a year, the company manufactured COMPOSER MDX2000 which was not only advantageous from a lower price point but also bridged the gap between pro audio and consumer electronics. In 1996, the company rolled out several products and among them, EURODESK MX8000 became a big hit. Before the decade ended, it released two more products, PRO-MIXER DX1000 and ULTRA-GRAPH PRO GEQ3102.

The New Era

Stepping into the new decade, the company acquired all the rights to CoolAudio technology from Intersil Corporation. It is a US-based that specialized in integrated circuits for audio applications. After the acquisition, the company also got licenses such as Alpine and Rowe. As the company was developing its manufacturing plants in China, in 2002, the construction was completed and named Behringer City. In 2010, the new logo of the company was born as it evolved much from the time it began. After a couple of years, the company also received the “Best in Show” award for “Companies to Watch.” As the company eventually went under the acquisition of MusicTribe, everything that the company launched is under the new brand name.

Annasha

Yokogawa Electric – Founded By The Renowned Architect Dr. Tamisuke Yokogawa.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

The history of Yokogawa Electric dates back to 1915 when a renowned architect, Tamisuke Yokogawa formed the company. Today, Yokogawa Electric Corporation is a famous Japanese multinational business that specializes in electrical equipment and IT infrastructure. The company operates in 55 companies with more than 19,000 employees. It also has 84 subsidiaries and 3 affiliated companies.

Yokogawa Electric’s headquarters is based in Musashino, Tokyo, Japan. Hitoshi Nara is the current President and CEO of the company while Takashi Nishijima is the Chairman. Yokogawa Electric is a publicly-traded company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Some of the most famous products of the company are manufacturing execution systems, production control systems, test and measurement instruments, etc.

Founding The Company In 1915

The story of Yokogawa Electric began when Dr. Yokogawa established an electric meter research institute in Tokyo. This foundation was formed by Ichiro Yokogawa and Shin Aoki. After working for a couple of years to launch the company’s product, it became the first company in Japan to produce and sell electric meters. Initially focusing exclusively on electric meters, the company soon pioneered its development and officially incorporated the enterprise, Yokogawa Electric Works Ltd in 1920. After it has been almost a decade that the company was only producing electric meters, it decided to expand its product line. So, in 1933 Yokogawa Electric began the research for aircraft instruments and started its production. Some of the other instruments that were introduced are flow, temperature, and pressure controllers.

Yokogawa Electric Becoming A Public Company

A few years later, the scenario changed for every industry due to the war. After the war ended, Yokogawa decided to go public in 1948 and developed its first electronic recorders. After going public, the company not just expanded its product line but also decided to enter the international market. So, in 1955, the company signed an agreement with Foxboro, the USA for providing technical assistance in industrial types of equipment. After two years, the company established Yokogawa Electric Works, Inc as a North American sales office.

With the advent of a new decade, Yokogawa entered the industrial analyzer market fully prepped. So, in 1969, it started the development, manufacture, and sale of vortex flowmeters. As the company previously opened sales offices in the United States, but it was for the first time in the 1970s that it established a plant outside Japan. This manufacturing plant was established in Singapore in 1974 and with that established the business in the country (Yokogawa Electric Singapore Pte. Ltd.). The company also expanded to Europe as it opened a sales office there. During this time Yokogawa Electric became one of the first companies in the market to bring distributed process control systems.

In 1983, the company merged with Hokushin Electric Works and after the merger established Yokogawa Hokushin Electric Corp. After a few years, the company decided to expand to China and did it jointly with Xian Instruments Factory. In 1986, the company changed its name to Yokogawa Electric Corporation which is the current name of the company. By the end of the 1980s, the company entered the high-frequency measuring instrument business and in 1990 expanded to the Middle east. It also entered the biotechnology business during the same time.

Hitoshi Nara – CEO

Hitoshi Nara, the current CEO and President of the company joined it in 1985. Since then he has served at various levels starting with Deputy Managing Director of Yokogawa Engineering Asia in 2001, Managing Director of Yokogawa (Thailand in 2003), Senior Vice President of several business units, and so on. He became the CEO of the company in April 2019. He has been also elected as the Director of the company and serving in the position for ten years.

Annasha

Silicon Graphics – Founded By Professor From Standford University.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

The American company, Silicon Graphics was founded late in 1981 in Mountain View, California. SG was built as a manufacturer and producer of high computer hardware and software products. The brand of Silicon Graphics was renamed after it went bankrupt and Rackable Systems acquired it. The assets of the company were split and two new brand names emerged but none of them were able to acquire their original position in the market. Eventually, Silicon Graphics lost its existence in the market under its original name. Back when the company was founded, its initial product was 3G graphics computer workstations but eventually, priorities shifted with the evolution of the technology market.

Establishment of Silicon Graphics

Jim Clark is the founder of Silicon Graphics and he was working at Standford University before founding the company. The foundation of the company started at the university as the early systems used by SG were based on the Geometry Machine developed by Clark and Marc Hannah. After developing this machine, Clark shortly left his position at the university as an electrical engineering associate professor. He started working on founding SG along with seven graduate students from the university and a few research staff. The main people who were involved in laying the foundation for the company are Kurt Akeley, David J. Brown, Tom Davis, Rocky Rhodes, Marc Hannah, Herb Kuta, and Mark Grossman along with Abbey Silverstone and a few others.

So, from 1982 the company became operational and Ed McCracken served as the CEO of the company from 1884 to 1997. During these thirteen years, the annual revenue of SG grew from $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. Though the annual revenue of the company was rising, SG faced a decline in demand for its product line during the late 1990s. There were several challenges in the marketplace and the share price was also falling. Due to this McCracken was replaced by Richard Belluzzo and under his leadership, the company started accelerating again. During this time, the company was trying to shift its main product line which also led to the creation of a new logo (making SG to SGI). All these initiatives taken by the company didn’t help much in its net growth and in 2005 the company was delisted from NYSE.

Ups and Downs

To cope with the immense financial and growth crisis, the company hired Alix Partners in 2005 to advise the company on how to return back to profitability. The best way to deal with the NYSE delisting was a reverse stock split. Next year, the company appointed Dennis McKenna as the new CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors. In the same year, the company also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the company itself and its US subsidiaries. It also decided to end the production of the MIPS/IRIX line and the IRIX operating system. By October 2006, the company emerged from bankruptcy protection and it was again listed on NYSE but under a new symbol. As the company eventually stabilized, it reentered the virtualization market in 2008.

Unfortunately, in December 2008, the entire phase of delisting was repeated once again as the company share price declined under the minimum requirement. In 2009, the company decided to sell all its assets to Rackable Systems for $25 million. Ultimately, the deal was finalized for $42.5 million and Rackable Systems announced that they would adopt the “Silicon Graphics International” global name and brand. In 2016, Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquired Silicon Graphics International.

Jim Clark – Founder of Silicon Graphics

Jim Clark (full name James Henry Clark) is a famous computer scientist who founded several companies apart from Silicon Graphics. His other ventures include myCFO, Netscape, and Healtheon. Clark’s main contribution to the research field led to the development of high-performance computing systems for the fast rendering of 3D computer images. He went to the University of Utah and after completing his Ph.D., he started working at NYIT’s Computer Graphics Lab.

Annasha

Palm Inc – Jeff Hawkins’ Tech Venture Whose Operations Revived Recently Through A Shelf Company.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Founded in 1992, the Palm brand is associated with manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs). The company became famous after designing PalmPilot, the first successfully marketed PDA in the world. Since its founding, the company has been through several mergers and acquisitions. For a period of time, the Palm brand almost evaporated from the tech industry but then in 2014 the operations again started after an acquisition. Palm Inc is also known for developing the Treo 600, one of the first smartphones, and several versions of Palm OS. HP acquired Palm in 2010 but after a year decided to discontinue the Palm brand. Again in 2014, HP sold the Palm trademark to TCL Corporation and the latter announced its plan to revive the brand.

The Original Palm Brand

In 1992, Jeff Hawkins incorporated the Palm brand and shortly brought Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan into the team. These three people are the main brains behind the invention of PalmPilot. When Palm was born, it wrote software for a consumer PDA, Zoomer. Casio was the manufacturer of this PDA and the Zoomer devices were distributed by Casio and GRiD. Palm mainly played the role of offering the PIM software. Though in a few years, Zoomer became a huge turndown, Palm stayed in business by selling software for HP devices. In 1995, Palm was acquired by U.S. Robotics Corp and after a couple of years, the latter was acquired by 3Com. So, Palm became a subsidiary of 3Com and the original founders left the company.

Splitting Of The Company

In 2000, Palm became an independent publicly-traded company as 3Com decided to take it public. Palm’s IPO was filed during the dot-com bubble so within a year the price of shares dropped and lost 90% of their value. In June 2001, Palm became the worst performing PDA manufacturer that was listed on the NASDAQ. After a year, Palm established a wholly-owned subsidiary, PalmSource for developing and licensing Palm OS. PalmSource and Palm became two different companies but the Palm trademark was held by a jointly owned holding company. By the end of 2003, the hardware division of the business merged with Handspring, and the business was renamed as palmOne Inc.

After a couple of years, palmOne purchased PalmSource’s share in the common trademark for $30 million. Thus, the brand name of palmOne was changed to Palm Inc, bringing back the old brand name. In the same year, PalmSource was acquired by a company called ACCESS. The new Palm Inc started a partnership with Verizon and Microsoft in 2006 to release Palm Treo 700w. The company entered into a strategic partnership with Elevation Partners who purchased a 25% equity stake in Palm. In 2008, the CEO of the company announced that Palm would no longer develop any new handheld PDAs. In early 2009, the share price increased to the WebOS hype but again dropped after a year.

Acquisition By HP

In April 2010, HP announced that it would be purchasing Palm for $1.2 billion and the deal was completed two months later. After a year, HP unfolded a new line of WebOS products but they were not under the brand name Palm. In 2011, HP also decided to discontinue the use of the Palm brand and after a few months ended the production of all Palm and WebOS services. After this decision, many Palm staff members started leaving HP. In 2014, the Palm brand name resurfaced again as HP sold the trademark to a shelf company, a regional president of TCL Corporation. In 2015, TCL confirmed the acquisition of the Palm brand and that Palm would be recreated by a team in Silicon Valley.

About Jeff Hawkins

Jeff Hawkins is the founder of both Palm Inc and Handspring. He studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and started working for GRiD Systems in 1982. After founding Palm and Handspring, Jeff co-founded Numenta in 2005 along with Dubinsky and Dileep George. Jeff has also made contributions in the field of neuroscience and founded Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in 2002.

Annasha

Nexon – Kim Jung-ju Founded The Company While Pursuing A Doctorate At KAIST.

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

Pioneering in the world of digital entertainment, Nexon is a world-famous video game publisher. The company has brought several innovations into the gaming industry since 1994. For example, it was Nexon that first introduced a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in the world. The founders of the company are Kim Jung-ju and Jake Song and the current CEO of Nexon is Owen Mahoney. Though Nexon is famous all over the world as a Japanese enterprise, it was originally a South Korean venture in the gaming industry. At present, the headquarters of the company is based in Tokyo, Japan. Nexon has a very large market and it is the fourth largest online gaming company in Asia. The company offers video games for both PC and mobile users.

Foundation & Initial Expansion

In 1994, the two founders, Jung-ju and Song founded Nexon in Seoul, South Korea. Two years later, in 1996, the company published its first video game, Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, which still today is available in the market. Many other titles followed this including QuizQuiz, Elance, Shattered Galaxy, and many more. After a few years, the company went into a mutual agreement with Solid Networks in 2000 and started its online gaming service in Japan. After a couple of years, the alliance with Solid Networks was dissolved and Nexon Japan Co., Ltd was formed as a subsidiary of the parent company. Though the company initially opened offices in South Korea and Japan, the games were available in several locations including Taiwan, China, Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, Europe, Singapore, and North America.

As the Japanese market of Nexon was expanding very rapidly the company decided to move its location to Tokyo. So, in 2005 the company relocated its headquarters, but South Korea’s market was also operational. In the same year, the company also entered the American market and established NX Games Inc. In 2008, Nexon made a big acquisition when it acquired Neople Inc. Through this wholly-owned subsidiary, the company became the developer of Dungeon & Fighter which is one of the most popular video games in China. In 2009, the company changed its name from Nexon Corporation to Nexon.

Present Days

In 2010, the South Korean business of the company acquired two companies in a row. They are Ndoors Corporation and GameHi Co., Ltd. The Korean business changed its name from Nexon Corporation to Nexon Korea Corporation in 2011. Eventually, the company decided to go public and filed its IPO by the end of 2011. The IPO was the largest in Japan in that year and also the second-largest for a technology company that year worldwide. A few years later, Owen Mahoney became the CEO and President of the company.

Under the new leadership, the company eventually expanded to Taiwan in 2015. In 2016, the company acquired Big Huge Games in the United States followed by i Digital Connect Co., which eventually became Nexon Thailand Co., Ltd. Two more companies that have been acquired in recent years are Pixelberry Studios and Embark Studios AB. In 2020, Nexon showed interest to invest an amount of $1.5 billion in listed entertainment companies. But the company also announced that it doesn’t have any interest in acquiring the companies that it is investing in. Recently, AGBO, a film production company has sold a $400 million minority stake to Nexon which is currently valued at $1.1 billion.

The Man Behind The Success

Kim Jung-ju is a South Korean businessman and an investor. He co-founded the company, Nexon while pursuing a doctorate at KAIST. Nexon is currently the largest gaming company in South Korea and under Kim’s leadership, the company released many innovative developments that the world has witnessed for the first time. Unfortunately, Kim passed away at the age of fifty-four and before his death, he was receiving treatment for severe depression. When he died, he was the third-wealthiest person in South Korea.

Annasha

Follow Us