Sabeer Bhatia


Sabeer Bhatia is an Indian-American businessman who co-founded the webmail company Hotmail.com.

Career

Bhatia briefly worked for Apple Computer and Firepower Systems Inc. He, along with his colleague Jack Smith, set up Hotmail on 4 July 1996, American Independence Day, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world
As President and CEO, Bhatia led Hotmail until its eventual acquisition by Microsoft in 1998 for an estimated $400 million. Bhatia worked at Microsoft for one year after the Hotmail acquisition and in April 1999, left Microsoft to start another venture, Arzoo Inc, an e-commerce firm.
Bhatia started a free messaging service called JaxtrSMS. He said that JaxtrSMS would do to SMS what Hotmail did for e-mail. Claiming it to be a disruptive technology, he says that the operators will lose revenue on the reduction in number of SMSes on their network but will benefit from the data plan that the user has to buy. To date, JaxtrSMS service has failed to replicate the success of Hotmail. Recently, he invested in email collaboration software, ccZen.

Personal life

Bhatia is of Sindhi heritage. His father, Baldev Bhatia, was a captain in the Indian Army and his mother worked for the Central Bank of India.
Sabeer married Tanya Sharma in 2008 and they have a daughter together. Later, they filed for divorce in January 2013 in a court in San Francisco, citing "irreconcilable differences".