Meet Vinita Gupta: IIT Roorkee graduate who became the first Indian woman to take her company public in the Silicon Valley

As a woman in the 70s, moving abroad, creating a company on your own and making it go public in a completely new nation seemed more like a movie plot than a plausible reality. However, Vinita Gupta did it all.

Born and raised in Delhi, India, Vinita earned her bachelor's degree in electronics and communications engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in 1973. A year later, she moved to the US and became the only woman in her class to graduate from UCLA with a master's degree in electrical engineering. "I was the only woman in (my) class. … I was coming from a developing country to the most significant nation in the world and the fact that there were no other women in my class was a surprise to me," she told The Almanac.

After this, she went on to work in telecommunications at GTE Lenkurt and Bell Northern Research before co-founding a telecommunications hardware company, Digital Link Corporation in 1985. In 1994, she became the first woman of Indian origin to take a company public in the US. When talking about the same to the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, she said: "The milestones are good to have. But very soon after that, you say, “What is the next milestone?” When you’re hiking, you get to a place to rest, and you take a deep breath.

That’s how I think of milestones. But then you go on the next trek."She shared how for the first five to seven years of working, people had problems understanding her Indian accent and so, she would twist her tongue to imitate the American accent. "‘Til I witnessed one of the Indian Stanford professors give a talk on his 60th birthday. … He talked and I said, “I can understand him perfectly. He’s not trying so hard to change his accent.”

And suddenly my life became so much simpler," she shared.

During her pursuit of professional dreams, she also married her husband Narendra Gupta and welcomed two children with him. In 1996, a report about Gupta titled 'The day Vinita Gupta's water broke' talked about when she attended her husband's board meeting despite being nine months pregnant fighting for his place in the company he founded. "The Guptas show that the struggle can be won.

They also show that the old practice of arranged marriages may have something to it after all," said the article.

Gupta continued to serve as the chair, president and CEO of the firm, which was later renamed Quick Eagle Networks, until her retirement in 2016. Moreover, she also holds two US patents, one for a solid-state relay issued in 1984 and another for a square root circuit issued in 1986.When asked about what advice she would give to students, she said, "Work for another company first and learn on someone else's dime."

"Don’t start a company right out of school. There are exceptions — Sam Altman left school and started one — but those are few and far between. Working elsewhere first gives you a broader landscape to choose from. Whatever you choose, treat it as the right thing and stick with it, unless you can clearly see there’s no future there," she added.

Since her retirement, she has become an avid Bridge player, earning three national championship titles. She also began painting after 35 years. Currently, Gupta serves as a Board Member on numerous boards including the Asia Society of Northern California, TiE, Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute and Palo Alto Medical Foundation. She has also authored her own memoir, 'The Woman in Deed', which was published in 2025.With her achievement and consistency, Gupta has become an exemplary icon for women in tech.