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Made in America
Immigrant entrepreneurs who found success in the New World
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Business New Haven
10/13/2003
By: Derek Stout
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Building a business from an idea is an indescribably risky and difficult road to travel. The journey is financially, mentally and physically draining.
Some would say it is idealistic to try and plant your business in the same place you have always grown, home, where most of your resources can be found. I interviewed three entrepreneurs that traveled this long and winding road to success, but their roads were much lengthier than one might think. Coming all the way from India and the South Pacific, the three entrepreneurs chatted about their orgins and their plans to settle here. No, these risk-takers came to the New Haven area to turn their hopes into businesses and their dreams into an accomplished reality.
Pazhani Sundaram
Company: Recombinant Technologies, New Haven
Age: 41
Place of origin: Chennai (formerly Madras), India
Year company founded: 1998
Initial funding source:
Bank Small Business Loan (SBL)
Pazhani Sundaram started his journey towards establishing his own bioscience firm, Recombinant Technologies, with two suitcases and a dream.
He arrived in the U.S. in 1990. Three years later he began his research on proteins and protein-based antibiotics at Yale University. Over the years Sundaram has collaborated with such universities as Harvard, Rutgers and Columbia in his research toward finding a cure for disease. Today, Recombinant Technologies is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
Asked why his company attracted research funding from the federal government, Sundaram says, "They told me that Recombinant Technologies is creating a great impact on the understanding of protein functions."
Dean Sakamoto
Company: Dean Sakamoto Architects, New Haven
Age: 42
Origin: Hawaiian, of Japanese heritage
Year company founded: 1999
Initial funding source: Personal funds
Dean Sakamoto’s designs come to life when people use them. As people work in the environments he has created — whether it’s at the very first art store he designed (Hull’s on Chapel Street in downtown New Haven) or in collaboration with architectural guru Cesar Pelle — Sakamoto’s dream is the continuous application of creativity every day.
Sakamoto is on the faculty of the Yale School of Architecture and in the past year has seen his work acknowledged by three American Institute of Architects/Connecticut chapter design awards. Sakamoto encourages his designers to focus not just on the end product, but on the design for people, places and objects over time.
Asked what qualities correlate most with entrepreneurial success, Sakamoto says. "One should possess the ability to communicate with all kinds of people."
Ashwatha Narayaha
Company: United International Corp., Wallingford
Age: 66
Place of origin: Bangalore, India
Year company founded: 1983
Initial funding source: Personal funds
United International Corp. has come a long way from the days of waiting for the phone to ring in Ashwatha Narayaha’s Wallingford home. His partner, Bangalore P. Neelakantian, worked with him at Cahn Engineering, the firm that gave Narayaha his first opportunity on the path toward engineering success.
Before 1970, Narayaha struggled in England to study his profession and carve out a living. After relocating to the United States he and his wife stayed in local YMCAs and knew very little English. He had to overcome serious social and economic barriers. He responded with the universal language of hard work.
UIC today has 45 employees and is entering its third decade in business. The phone has seldom stopped ringing since that very first day.
"If a job needs to be done by tomorrow, UIC gets it done that evening," says Narayaha.
Keeping pace with the times in the key to survival in the engineering or any business, he observes. "We moved on," he explains. "We moved on from ignorance; we moved on from complaining and we will move on to the future in the only country where this success could happen for me."
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