Sabeer Bhatia (born 30 December 1968) is an

Indian American Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans in the United States, who ar ...

businessman who co-founded the first free

web-based email Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) provi ...

service, Hotmail.com (now Outlook.com) in 1996. In 2021 he co-founded ShowReel with Javed Yunus. ShowReel initially hosted short videos for job seekers and founders. It has since turned into an AI-based entrepreneurship course.

Early life and education

Bhatia was born in

Chandigarh Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the ...

on December 30th, 1968, to Baldev Bhatia and Daman Bhatia. His father was a captain in the

Indian Army The Indian Army (IA) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the Land warfare, land-based branch and largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief, Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head ...

, and his mother was working at the

Central Bank of India The Central Bank of India (CBI) is an Public sector banks in India, Indian public sector bank based in Mumbai. Despite its name, CBI is not the central bank of India, a role served by the Reserve Bank of India. History The Central Bank of ...

. Bhatia studied at

The Bishop's School The Bishop's School is an independent college preparatory Episcopal day school in La Jolla, a community in San Diego, California. Bishop's is known for its reputation in academics, arts, and athletics, as well as its sizable endowment. The s ...

Pune Pune ( ; , ISO 15919, ISO: ), previously spelled in English as Poona (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1978), is a city in the state of Maharashtra in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan plateau in Western ...

. He then studied at St. Joseph's Boys' High School, Bengaluru, and St. Joseph's Pre-University College,

Bengaluru Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

. In 1985, he enrolled at

BITS Pilani The Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS Pilani) is a private deemed university in Pilani, Rajasthan, India. It focuses primarily on higher education and research in engineering and sciences. BITS Pilani was one of the first ...

, where he studied for two years before earning a highly competitive transfer scholarship to the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

to complete his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He then attended

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, where he obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering.

Career

Bhatia briefly worked for

Apple Inc Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer ...

, as a

hardware engineer Hardware may refer to: Technology Computing and electronics * Electronic hardware, interconnected electronic components which perform analog or logic operations ** Digital electronics, electronics that operate on digital signals *** Computer hardw ...

and Firepower Systems Inc. He, along with his colleague Jack Smith, set up

Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

on 4 July 1996,

American Independence Day Independence Day, known colloquially as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States which commemorates the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing th ...

, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world. As president and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

, Bhatia led Hotmail until its eventual acquisition by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 1998 for an estimated $400 million. Bhatia started a free messaging service called

JaxtrSMS __NOTOC__ Jaxtr was a social communications company that melds together global calling, SMS, and social networking. Founded by Phillip Mobin and Touraj Parang in October 2005, Jaxtr uses Voice over Internet Protocol to offer competitive rates as we ...

. He said that JaxtrSMS would do to

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

what

did for e-mail. Claiming it to be a disruptive technology, he says that the operators will lose revenue on the reduced number of SMSes on their network but will benefit from the data plan that the user has to buy. To date, JaxtrSMS service has failed to replicate the success of Hotmail. In 2006, Sabeer proposed the construction of "Nano City", a city that would be similar to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

in northern

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

.Nano City on lines of Silicon Valley in Haryana – Times Of India
/ref> It was approved by the state government of

Haryana Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...

in September. By 2010, no progress had been made; the project was cancelled by the HSIIDC later that year. Recently, he invested in email collaboration software, ccZen and another e-commerce technology provider E-junkie.

Personal life

Bhatia is of

Sindhi Hindu Sindhi Hindus are ethnic Sindhis who practice Hinduism and are native to the Sindh region of the Indian subcontinent. They are spread across modern-day Sindh, Pakistan and India. After the partition of India in 1947, many Sindhi Hindus were amo ...

heritage. Bhatia married Tanya Sharma in 2008 and they have a daughter Arianna. Later, they filed for divorce in January 2013 in a court in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, citing "irreconcilable differences".

Early life and education

Career

Personal life

References

Further reading