Currently the chief executive officer and co-founder of Gemplex Inc, Dr Hemant Kanakia is also credited with founding Torrent Network Technologies in 1996, which got purchased by Ericsson in 1999 for $450 million. Till then Dr Kanakia served as Torrent’s chairman and CEO. After the buyout, Torrent became the core of Ericsson’s global IP initiatives and was renamed as the IP Infrastructure (IPI) division. Torrent/Ericsson IPI is considered a leading innovator providing advanced Internet routing solutions to communications companies worldwide. Dr Kanakia’s present company Gemplex is a business-networking services provider offering secure connectivity worldwide through its flagship IP VPN product portfolio.

Under Dr Kanakia’s leadership, Torrent had assembled premier high-technology engineering and management teams. In May 1999, Dr Kanakia received KPMG’s 1999 High Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his impressive contribution to the Washington, DC region’s technology industry.

The underlying concepts for Dr Kanakia’s vision stemmed from his tenure at AT&T Bell Labs, where he led an elite research team of engineers to design advanced data network switching technology. The research forms some of the core technology of today’s Internet.

Dr Kanakia holds a BTech from Bombay’s prestigious Indian Institute of Technology and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He holds several patents in the field of packet and cell switching architectures and real-time traffic management algorithms. Over a dozen of his research papers have been published in major communications and trade journals including those of the IEEE, JSAC and SIGCOMM. Dr Kanakia is an accomplished and frequent speaker at industry symposia and conferences. n