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How NEO Became China’s Answer to Ethereum?

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The cryptocurrency industry is one that is growing at an unprecedented rate. The environment has grown tremendously in the last five years and is now a billion-dollar sector. Several entrepreneurs owe their millionaire status to this industry. This time around we will be looking at two such millionaires. But all this success has led to a saturation in the industry, and it is now highly competitive. With new currencies propping up every year, it is difficult to stay ahead and stay relevant. One such new cryptocurrency that is gaining momentum is NEO. Here’s a look at how this currency came up and the story behind its success.

NEO Vs Ethereum

Ethereum is the second most popular cryptocurrency, second only to the Bitcoin. However, NEO has been creeping up behind Ethereum and is very close to catching up to it. The competition between the two is so fierce that is has earned NEO the nickname “Chinese Ethereum”. The currencies are going head to head against each other because they are very similar in many aspects. For instance, both currencies are multi-purpose, unlike the Bitcoin.

However, NEO gets a lot of support from the developer community as it supports C++, C#, Java and even Go. Therefore, developers skilled at one of these languages can build projects on NEO. Furthermore, the system has the power to handle over 10,000 transactions/second. In comparison, Ethereum supports only 15 transactions/second.

Growth in China

One of the biggest support that NEO receives is from China. China creates alternatives for most services provided around the world. For instance, Alibaba goes head to head with Amazon, while WeChat battles WhatsApp, and Baidu takes on Google. In the field of cryptocurrency, NEO is China’s answer to Ethereum. So much so that has become China’s largest cryptocurrency due to support from the Chinese government.

About the Founder

Da Hongfei, who co-founded NEO, also founded AntShares in 2014 for a decentralized app building. This company later became NEO in 2017 via a re-branding scheme. Hongfei and Antshare’s CTO Erik Zhang founded Onchain in 2014. This company served as a blockchain research and development company.

Da Hongfei
Image Source: Google

Onchain levied partnerships with Microsoft China and Fadada throughout 2016 to build this company. These three companies together became Legal China later on. Hongfei also serves as a communication link between his company and the Chinese government and works as their consultant on matters regarding cryptocurrency. 

Growth and Success

Onchain was also the first Chinese blockchain development company. In 2016, NEO released China’s first consensus protocol called dBFT. It is this protocol that allows NEO to carry out lightning-quick transactions. NEO started 2017 priced at $0.16 and then grew a miraculous 111,400% to end the year at $162! The company’s current market share stands at a whopping $4.96 billion. 

The company opened with 100 million NEOs, out of which, 50 million went to early investors, and the rest went into a smart contract. Every year, 15 million tokens get released to fund development and research. In 2018, Da Hongfei announced that the company would split into NEO Foundation, under Hongfei and Erik Zhang, and two units named NEO Global Development and Global Capital.

NGD will work on research and development, while the Foundation would handle everything to do with operations and marketing. NGD opened its first office in Shanghai in 2018 and the second one in Seattle. 

The word “Neo”, in Greek, means new, modern and young. With their fresh ideas and young team of professionals, it does look like NEO is the newest kid on the block with the power to disrupt the cryptocurrency industry.

AddressHealth

AddressHealth: The Journey Of Anand Lakshman To Create A One-Stop-Shop For Pediatric Healthcare

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Children are the future of any country because they are going to participate in the development of the country. However, children should be healthy in their early stages of growth. Because it determines their mental and physical development. Also, it is the utmost requirement to have healthy and intelligent youths to build the nation. In India, almost 27% of the population has consisted of children up to 12 years of age. But India is facing several health challenges every day. Especially, related to the child’s health. And yet, most of the child health issues are unaddressed. The reason behind this is considered to be the lack of healthcare providers and pediatricians. However, the AddressHealth came forward to provide the best healthcare service to the children. In 2010, Dr. Anand Laxman set up AdressHealth to serve society. 

Backstory

In India, the various healthcare areas are fragmented from each other. Like dental health, nutrition and vision, etc. are rarely found in one place. Since these areas isolated, most people don’t take their children for all types of a medical check-ups. But two young doctors, Anand Lakshman and his fried A. Radhakrishnan took a big step to change this scenario. They always wanted to do something to ensure that every child attains a positive health state. Thus, Anand with his friend founded AddressHealth in 2010. 

Presently, this company is the largest school health provider in India. Also, it is recognized as India’s first one-stop-shop for Primary Paediatric Healthcare. It is a Bengaluru based start-up that is a pioneer in children’s primary healthcare services. 

School health program of AddressHealth

After one year of formation, the company launched the School health program. Earlier, it started in six schools covering health check-ups of about 4000 children. Basically, the program is an initiative to check the complete health of students. Under this program, they check vision, hearing ability, teeth, etc. In fact, it’s a complete medical examination of students from head-to-toe.

In addition, they have designed a curriculum for the student of class 1st to 5. This curriculum covers contents related to healthy behavior as per the age of students. Also, it provides information related to physical and mental behavior changes during the formative age. Presently, AddressHealth successfully providing this program in about 250 schools. 

AddressHealth’s Founders

Anand Lakshman

He is the co-founder of Addresshealth also, the current CEO of the company. After long service in the government’s public health program, he plunged into entrepreneurship in 2010. 

Education and Career

Anand went to Kendriya Vidyalaya for his secondary education. Thereafter, he completed M.B.B.S in medicine from Mysore medical college. Also, he attended the Tata institute of social science for post-graduation in Public Health Management. However, after that, he worked for several years on the public health program. During his career, he also worked in Micronutrient initiative. As well, served as an RNTCP medical consultant for the World Health Organization.

Anoop Radhakrishnan

He is a doctor turned entrepreneur to set up a new generation healthcare project. After graduating from IIM-Lucknow, Anoop set up consultancy familiar as IndigoEdge. But being a doctor, he always wanted to serve in his field. Therefore, he joined Anand to set up Addresshealth in 2010.  

Successes of AddressHealth

AddressHealth rise as a first Indian one-shop stop for primary child healthcare providers. In fact, the company is a pioneer in this field. Today, with its School health program, the company became the largest school health provider. Also, they run several Child Speciality Clinics. Recently, the company successfully completed 10 years of excellent healthcare service. However, it is conducting several projects for the complete medical examination of students from head-to-toe. The company’s School health program is aimed to increase school coverage in the future.

AddressHealth also awarded by Grand College Canada as “The Stars in Global Health-7”.

Precision Castparts Corp

How Precision Castparts Corp Caught Warren Buffett’s Eye?

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Warren Buffett has been running Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for over five decades, and the organization has become synonymous with success. So when the 85-year-old billionaire announced at an annual shareholder meet that he was going to buy Precision Castparts Corp, people were up and listening with intent.

He went on to buy the company the Oregon-based company for $37 billion becoming one of his most highly-priced acquisitions. So what was it about this metal dealing company that caught Buffet’s eye? Precision makes parts for the aerospace industry; a greatly untapped market. Thanks to the efforts of CEO Mark Donegan, Precision has grown to become a giant slayer and here’s a look at their remarkable journey.

The Captain of the Ship

Mark Donegan is a 60-year-old, who played football for Villanova University with an eye for detail. This quiet and reserved CEO has made a name for himself, thanks to his great track record and strive for perfection. This is clear by how after heading Precision for 13 years, the company’s stock has grown by over twenty times!

Mark Donegan
Image Source: Google Images

He has also helped Precision quadruple their annual turnover, bringing it up to an astounding $10 billion and has also been a part of several acquisitions. Precision is now a key supplier to industry heavy-weights such as Boeing, Airbus, and General Electric. All these efforts and striving for perfection made him a part of Barron’s list of the best CEOs in 2014. The CEO is a perfectionist who pushes himself as hard as he pushes his employees and even helps managers with their problems at factories.

Humble Beginnings of Precision

Mark Donegan studied accounting at Villanova and started his career at GE under Jack Welch. Precision hired Donegan’s boss Bill McCormick as President in 1985, and he followed soon after. Engineer and MBA graduate Ed Cooley founded and ran Precision in the 1950s. A decade later, the company began supplying to GE via factories in Portland.

McCormick, who became CEO in 1991, stated that on joining Precision, he found it was run like a family-owned enterprise. Under him, the company expanded aggressively by venturing into manufacturing parts for gas turbines.

They also acquired forging company Wyman-Gordon, which had ties to the aerospace industry. Donegan was working his way up the corporate ladder and soon became President. By 2001, McCormick made him Operating Chief and a year later, he became CEO when the former retired.

New Era

Under Donegan, the company began an acquisition spree, buying even more companies that were associated with the aerospace industry. In 2007, Precision bought Cherry Aerospace to further expand their business and as a result became the 568th largest U.S. company.

In 2012, Donegan acquired a titanium supplier for a whopping $2.9 billion, helping to consolidate Precision’s position in the market. His relentless efforts led to the company’s shares hit an all-time high price of $275.09. By 2013, Precision had over 150 factories around the US to help feed its ever-expanding empire. 

Growing Interest

The company went through a rough patch during 2014-15 due to plunging oil prices, which led to their shares dropping by 27%. However, this led to Buffett forming an idea for an acquisition. His investment manager, Todd Combs, had amassed about 3% shares in Precision by 2012. In 2015, Buffett led Donegan to know that he wanted to buy Precision and the duo met in Idaho. The offer on which they settled finally, came up to $235 a share, allowing Donegan himself to pocket $51.8 million. 

Since the acquisition in 2016, Donegan has captained the ship and increased the company’s stock prices. It is one of the only three Fortune 500 companies to be based in Oregon and ranks 9th with regards to the leaders in Aerospace and Defense.

The company boasts of over 29,600 employees and makes more than 9.6 billion USD annually. It is quite easy to see exactly why Buffett took interest in this industry juggernaut and the stalwart who leads it.

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IGATE: One of The Fastest Growing It Companies Worldwide

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Employment has developed immensely due to IT companies. Most of the engineers show interest in Computer Science and IT companies like IGATE because of the vast job opportunities. Since technology is not slowing down anymore, IT has great potential.

The IT industry is not reaching a saturation point shortly. Many people predict there might be a sudden pause in the growth but the continuous need for better services is not going to stop any sooner. Many IT companies are emerging out around the world. They are coming up with better solutions every day. Data transfer, cloud computing, consultancy services, etc are major demands in today’s world.

IGATE

IGATE is one of the oldest IT service companies. Co-founded by Ashok Trivedi and Sunil Wadhwani, the company was established in 1996 in New Jersey, U.S. Capgemini, a French-IT company acquired IGATE in 2015.

Ashok Trivedi

Born into a family in Lucknow, Ashok Trivedi completed his Bachelor’s and Masters from the University of Delhi. He went to the United States to complete his MBA from Ohio University. He also attended a program at Harvard Business School.

Ashok stepped into the professional world with Unisys Corp in 1976. In 1988, Ashok co-founded Mastech (parent company of IGATE) with Sunil Wadhwani. He received the Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young. Ashok is also the recipient of the Banyan Tree Award and Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ashok Trivedi is always known as an angel investor. He is a part of the Indian Angel Network and Managing Partner at SWAT Capital.

Ashok has founded Trivedi Family Foundation in 2015 and co-founded Ashoka University.

Sunil Wadhwani

Sunil Wadhwani has been born and brought up in Mumbai. He is an engineer who received his B. Tech degree from IIT Madras. Graduated in 1974 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering he went to Carnegie Mellon University to study industrial administration.

Sunil founded UroTec Systems in 1981 and became the President and CEO of the company. His next business was Mastech with Ashok Trivedi.

Sunil is also a well-known philanthropist. In 2014, he has founded the WISH Foundation to provide healthcare facilities in low-income areas of India. Sunil Wadhwani along with his brother Romesh Wadhwani founded Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2018. The foundation has collaborated with some of the famous universities in the world.

IGATE Founders
Image Source – Google

History of IGATE

Ashok and Sunil established Mastech Systems Corporations in 1988. Initially, IGATE was a subsidiary of the Mastech (now Mastech Digital). Ten years after its establishment, the company exclusively provided IT services to companies across the map.

The company started growing very fast in early 2000. It expanded to thirty-four different countries which included North America, Europe, and Asia. India became IGATE’s largest market and the revenue summed up to $1.2 billion.

A Big Acquisition

How often it happens that a company acquires a business three times larger its size. In 2011, IGATE acquired Patni Computer Systems for $1.2 billion. The company bought a 63% stake in Patni. It was quite impressible for a company way smaller than Patni.

Under the supervision of these great co-founders, IGATE grew big from nothing and created big news.

Capgemini

Capgemini is a French-IT conglomerate that provides consultancy, outgoing and professional services. Founded in 1967, the company today has over 2, 00,000 employees. It provides services in more than 40 countries. 50% of employees of the company are Indian.

Capgemini acquired IGATE on 1st July 2015. Paul Hermelin, CEO of Capgemini said that he acquired the company to set new operations in the market of North America. IGATE had 31,000 employees during the acquisition.

Other than IGATE, Capgemini’s other subsidiaries are Sogeti, LiquidHub, and Altran.

IGATE Today

In 2014, IGATE has won the VCCircle Award for best PE/VC backed IT Company of the Year 2013. It acquired the 51st position in Fortune’s Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies.

IGATE is a global service provider. The main services of the company are investment strategies, business process outsourcing, and services related to it. IGATE is currently working in telecommunication to improve voice infrastructure and voice quality.

IGATE focuses on the quality of service. They follow the principle of providing better services to the customers over new products as one bad experience can cause a huge loss of business.

AT&T

Randall L. Stephenson – A Dazzling Star In The World Of Telecommunication

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High-speed Internet is a very important part of our world. For the past two decades, everything is getting better and faster. Development throughout the world has been growing exponentially. CEO’s like Randall L. Stephenson helps the companies to grow and take the company to the next level.

But, it’s human nature to look beyond. The sheer curiosity and passion are what drives mankind to learn and discover more. With the establishment of fast-growing technology and efficient network, speed has become a very important factor. It has been just a couple of years that we settled with the 4G speed that 5G is paving its way.

Telecommunication Companies

The multinational telecommunication conglomerates are working for faster networks. Mass media, telecommunication, and technology together can create the strongest devices for transport and communication.

AT&T is one of the greatest companies of all time for telecommunication. And, Randall L. Stephenson being the current Chairman and CEO of the company is one of the powerful men in the industry. He acquired this position in May 2007.

Who is Randall L. Stephenson?

Randall started his career in 1982. Over the years, he has become a true leader serving the world with faster Internet and much more. AT&T has grown significantly under his leadership and made the greatest acquisitions.

AT&T CEO
Image Source – Google

He believes in competing. According to Randall, competitions help fetch the best quality products faster.

Early Career

Randall completed his Master’s from the University of Oklahoma. His career started with the company, Southwestern Bell Telephone. He served the company for a good long time.

When he started working for the company in 1982 he got a job in the IT sector. Over the years he did well in the finance sector and got a chance to work abroad. Randall fled to Mexico for his job and there he received training from Carlos Slim, one of the richest and most successful Mexican businessmen.

In 2001, Randall became the chief financial officer of SBC (Southwestern Bell Corporation). By the next couple of years, he helped the company coming out of debt worth $30 billion. In 2004, Randall got promoted as the Chief Operating Officer of the company. Before this post, Randall played his role as the chairman of the Board of Directors for Cingular Wireless.

The Great Success

Though Randall was doing great at the very beginning of his career, the real deal came in 2005. This year, SBC acquired AT&T and Randall continued in the company as COO. SBC changed its name to AT&T after the acquisition and in 2007 Randall became the CEO of the company.

The story doesn’t end here. Randall also became the Chairman of the Business Roundtable in 2014. He continued this position for a couple of years.

AT&T

Bell Telephone Company and AT&T are correlated and their history dates back to 1877. The founder of the Bell Telephone Company is Alexander Graham Bell. Southwestern Bell Telephone Company was a subsidiary of Bell Telephone Company.

All the subsidiaries and the former parent company merged in 2005. And the newly formed company changed its name to AT&T. The company also acquired Cingular Wireless and renamed it as AT&T Mobility.

AT&T’s Growth after 2007

Randall’s leadership changed the face of the company forever.

In 2013, the company decided to expand to Latin America through a partnership with America Mobil. The next year AT&T acquired Iusacell (Mexican carrier) and NII Holdings (Mexican Wireless Business). The two companies were merged and named as AT&T Mexico.

In July 2015, the company acquired DirecTV for $48.5 billion and in October 2016 Time Warner for $108.7 billion. These are the two biggest acquisitions in the history of the company.

The biggest news for AT&T came in 2017. It became the largest telecommunication company around the world and also the largest provider of the mobile telephone.

Criticism

Randall faced a lot of difficulties and hard situations after the acquisition of Time Warner. In September 2019, Elliott Management published a letter questioning the position of Randall in AT&T. Elliott made some suggestions regarding the company and Randall stepping down from his position was one of them. This situation has not been a friendly one for the company’s reputation.

Fighting Social Drawbacks

Randall is a great social influencer who promotes anti-racism. He gave a speech about how it is affecting our society and pulling us back from the true sense of development. Randall is a person who deeply believes in equality and preaches the same.

SanDisk

Sanjay Mehrotra: Never-Ending Journey For A Better Digital World of SanDisk Founder

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There are many persons who believe in innovations. Although, very few of them are responsible to make that happen. But the persons, who dare to transfer those inventions from lab to daily use, make the world a better place. So, they set their name in the list of influencing entrepreneurs. Sanjay Mehrotra is one of them, who not only believes in innovation but also devoted himself to deliver a better one. He is the co-founder and former CEO of SanDisk that replaces hard disk drives with flash memory in the 19th century.

Image Source – Google

At present, he is the CEO of Micron Technology, which is one of the leading memory storage devices manufacturers. It has been never easy to climb the ladder of success. Yet, it is inspiring to know the untold journey of Sanjay Mehrotra.

Early life

He was born on 27th June 1958 in Kanpur, India. Sanjay spent his childhood days in the same city. Thereafter, the Mehrotra family shifted to Delhi due to his father’s work. He went to Delhi school for primary education. Also, at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya he completed secondary schooling.

UG course at the University of California

When the students were dreaming of post-graduation in foreign. At that time, Sanjay’s father inspired him for UG in a foreign country. BITS Pilani was well known for collaboration with international Universities. So, he took admission for UG program, in the hope of future chance to go abroad. He completed two years of Electrical engineering in Bits Pilani, and then the day came.

He grabbed the opportunity to study the remaining UG course at the University of California, Berkeley. Reaching there was not a cakewalk. At first, his visa got denied three times. But his father’s support and his ambitions do not let him stop. They had to request multiple times and countless meetings to the Indian US embassy. Finally, he got the passport and flight landed at the destination.

Earlier achievements

He applied for a master’s degree, at the same University as a UG program. During his master’s program, he worked on Integrated circuits. But his interest was more towards designing. Hence, he could not stop himself from discovering non-volatile memory design.

Sanjay named more than 70 patents. Also, he presented research papers on the Flash memory system and non-volatile memory design.

He joined Intel Corporation as a Non-Volatile design engineer in 1980. It was the opportunity to explore his area of interest in non-volatile memory design more.

What happens when one Indian, one Chinese, and one person from Israel meet? No idea. Well, when these three persons met, they founded SanDisk; that too in one different country.

Boom of SanDisk

In 1988, Sanjay Mehrotra, Eli Harari, and Jack Yuan started a small company in Silicon Valley. Initially, they wanted to replace hard disk drives with their flash solid-state drives (SSD). To achieve this, they designed the first flash-based SSD mounted in a 2.5inch hard drive for IBM. Though it was of only 20MB capacity, it was a great move to install the technology which was at the experimental state at that time.

The first product of SanDisk traded out for $1000. After that, they changed their products according to market needs. SanDisk boomed the digital industry with its first mega-market sale of open standard digital films.

The Journey Continues

In the year 2011, Sanjay Mehrotra acquired the position as CEO. Under his policies, the company gained most of the electronics market. In fact, in 2012 SanDisk was the third-highest among other consumer electronics companies.

In recent years, SanDisk working on SSD for cloud computing. Also, they produce more than 2 million USB flash drivers per day. In 2017, Sanjay Mehrotra assigned as the new Chief executive officer of Micron Inc. Also, he is the onboard member of SanDisk.