Possessing the arena, Keerti Melkote is the founder of Aruba Networks, a global enterprise. After fifteen years of experience in the technology arena, he believes that facing initial challenges with a clear mindset rewards you with success.

I was born in Hyderabad and did all my schooling there. My family was from the Bangalore and Mysore area, so I spent much time, during the summer vacations, in Bangalore. After completing my B.Tech in Electronics and Communications Engineering at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, I joined Purdue University in the USA for an MS degree in Electrical Engineering, with an emphasis on distributed systems and computer networking.

That was at a time when the US economy was in a recession. University classrooms were full of students, and funding for research projects was scarce. I had come to the US with a loan for just six months; I had to feed myself for the remaining 18 months. I did several on-campus jobs to cope. Times were hard, and I was pushed to the brink of quitting several times. I thought of giving up and returning to India, but somehow, I found the strength from within to continue. Along the way, I promised myself that I would face the realities of life head-on,.

Career beginnings
My first on-campus job was at the pPhysics department at Purdue, where I was tasked with maintaining the computers and networks for the high-energy physics group. After this, I joined Intel as a network engineer. There I acquired experience in designing, deploying and managing an enterprise-wide IP network, and learnt what an IT administrator sees on a daily basis. I continue to apply the lessons learnt there in my job today as the head of marketing, products and partnerships for Aruba.

After Intel, I was attracted to Cisco, which was a great place to work. It was very rewarding, but it had already become a big company, which is what motivated me to move to Shasta Networks.
Shasta was a great experience in terms of learning what it takes to operate in a small -company environment. At Shasta,; I discovered at Shasta that I really liked to work in small entrepreneurial groups where I could make a real impact. Shasta was eventually acquired by Nortel Networks and; at this point, I again decided to work with the founders of Shasta Networks, who had started a company called Tahoe Networks. Tahoe focused on the mobile operator segment, and was trying to marry the Internet with the mobile network using 3G technologies. It was a great team with a great product, but the market for this product did not materialisze. Although not as successful as Shasta from an investor's perspective, Tahoe nevertheless provided valuable experience on what NOT to do at a start-up. More importantly, it gave me a glimpse of the potential of the mobile networking phenomenon, which led to the founding of Aruba Networks.

Aruba -- a calling
Silicon Valley is full of start-ups, and I always wanted to venture out and start something on my own. I knew I was making an impact at Cisco, but then Cisco had already become a successful company without my contributions. This, in a sense, felt like I was just riding Cisco's success; I lacked that something I could conclusively point to as my own success. I had to prove to myself that I was capable of doing something completely on my own. When the opportunity to turn this idea into reality presented itself, I naturally jumped at it.

Aruba is a small island in the Caribbean, a popular vacation destination. It is an international name, and our stock ticker is ARUN (Aruba Networks), which has an Indian connotation. ARUN is the rising sun at dawn, which to me represents the new age of mobile networking.