From India to 'Proficorns'
An internet pioneer, alumnus Rajesh Jain seeks to help tomorrow’s innovators.
by Allison Elliott
In 1988, when India-based entrepreneur Rajesh Jain came to Columbia for a master’s degree in electrical engineering, he had an ambitious goal to graduate in nine months. Such a feat required a strong background in computer science in order to skip the prerequisite courses for advanced classes.
The only problem was that Jain had no background in computer science, and his advisor was understandably reluctant to allow him to take a course like operating systems without any programming experience.
“I told my advisor ... Look, give me two or three weeks,” he remembers. “If I don’t do well, then I’ll drop the course.” On his first test, Jain scored a miserable 2 out of 20, but he kept studying and improving.“In that first semester, I spent 70% of my time on this single course, operating systems, and I think in the end, probably I finished second or third in the class,” he says. “That course made a very big difference because it helped me skip a level.”
Just as planned, Jain MS’89 was able to complete his degree in nine months with a summer course. That focus and tenacity would serve Jain well in the years to come. After working at NYNEX (New York New England Exchange) for two years, he returned to India just as the World Wide Web was emerging. Jain seized the opportunity, creating India’s first internet portals in the ‘90s and becoming a pioneer in Asia’s dot-com revolution. His startup, IndiaWorld Communications, was later acquired by Satyam Infoway for $115 million in one of Asia’s largest Internet deals. As an entrepreneur, Jain had his own approach to starting companies, which he termed “proficorns”: bootstrapped companies that focused on profitability over the venture capital behind “unicorns.”
A Global Reach
In 1997, Jain founded Netcore, which later morphed into a global provider of technology solutions for the marketing technology (MarTech) industry that helps brands design and execute highly effective campaigns for customer engagement. Netcore is the largest such company in Asia, facilitating tens of billions of messages and customer interactions per month.
“I realized there was no word for companies like us — unlike venture-backed startups, which had a “unicorn” aspiration — both IndiaWorld and Netcore were bootstrapped, profitable, and scaled. That’s what I define as a proficorn.”
Throughout his successful career, he has been an invited speaker at national and international forums and has also been featured in cover stories in both TIME and Newsweek. Jain was named “one of India’s Best Strategists” by The Economic Times in Sept. 2013. His recent book, “Startup to Proficorn,” shares advice for budding entrepreneurs based on his own experiences building two proficorns–IndiaWorld and Netcore. Along the way, he began sharing his thoughts daily on his blog at rajeshain.com. “I write for myself because writing helps me clarify my thinking,” he says. “The virtuous cycle of reading-thinking-writing is very powerful.”
Setting Sights On America
As a child, Jain had a fascination with engineering, particularly civil (his father was a civil engineer), due to his love for buildings and bridges. Later, he fell in love with computers, teaching himself the early programming language BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) on his father’s office computer in 1983.
I write for myself because writing helps me clarify my thinking. The virtuous cycle of reading-thinking-writing is very powerful.
Rajesh Jain
After completing his undergraduate degree at IIT Bombay in electrical engineering, he was encouraged by his father to pursue his studies further. His own father had completed his master’s in the U.S. in the early ’60s and had stayed on for two years before returning to India. At Columbia, Jain fondly remembers staying at Hogan Hall and his first semester of courses with Charles Batchelor Professor Emeritus Mischa Schwartz, who taught computer networks, and Professor Gerry Maguire, who taught operating systems.
In 2023, Jain returned to Columbia Engineering to give a talk to students as part of the Tech CEO lecture series, a program that brings CEOs to campus to share insights. At the time, he gave students three actionable pieces of advice: to be patient, have a unique offering, and cultivate “me time.” Today, he would add that students think AI-native by imagining a future where agents and superintelligence are coming, not to be afraid of failure, and to focus on “impossible problems.”
“Take up big problems and go at them with an entrepreneurial mindset,” he advises. “The odds are that most new ventures fail, but each in their own way moves the needle forward.”
Education As A Foundation
As part of his continued engagement with Columbia, Jain decided to create the Jain Family Fellowship Fund to provide fellowship support to graduate students enrolled at Columbia Engineering, with a preference for students who have lived, worked, or studied in India. He chose graduate education because that is where he believes deep research and breakthroughs will come from.
“At the graduate level, students start to think more deeply about what they want to do,” he says. “That is what is going to drive frontier innovations. And, of course, Columbia Engineering is at the forefront of a lot of areas, in terms of what’s happening.” Along with supporting innovation, Jain has a more personal reason for contributing. “Education is what makes us; that’s what really helps the next generation of students,” he says. “I think we should do our best for the institutions that have made us, that have created who we are and made us what we are.”