Kiliyur Balakrishna Chandrasekhar, born in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, can be called the original farmer. That is because, as the founder of Exodus Communications, he pioneered server farms and coined the word ‘Internet Data Center’, which provided Internet hosting services to dotcom businesses. Chandrasekhar has a BSc from the Madras University and a BTech in Electronics Engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology campus of Anna University. He started his career in 1983 at Wipro, after which he moved to the United States in 1990 just as the dotcom boom was emerging.
In 1992, after he founded his first company Fouress, Inc., that dealt with network software design and development, he was attracted by the potential of Internet. And to serve the dotcom boom, he founded Exodus Communications, which went on to have one of the most successful IPOs of the 1990s before the dotcom bubble burst and took many dotcom businesses and along with them Exodus down. Later he co-founded and is the Chairman of e4e, a global technology holding company. He is also the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Jamcracker, Inc., which deals with on-demand software. As one of the biggest Indian success stories in Silicon Valley, Chandrasekhar has been awarded the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by Anna University where he set up the AU-KBC Research Centre in 1999 to support research in Information Sciences and Life Sciences. He is also a prominent supporter of budding entrepreneurs.