Kumar Malavalli

Kumar Malavalli is an Indian American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. In 1995, he founded Brocade Communications Systems with Paul Bonderson Jr. He currently serves as chairman of C3DNA Inc. and as a partner at VKRM Services, a boutique investment firm.

Malavalli was presented with an honorary doctor of science degree by California State University, East Bay in 2013. Professor Heiner Litz currently holds the Kumar Malavalli Chair.

Early life and education

Malavalli was born in early March 1943 in Mysore, Karnataka, India. He moved to Düsseldorf, Germany in 1972 following his graduation from the National Institute of Engineering with a bachelor's degree in engineering.

Malavalli co-founded Brocade Communications, a producer of storage area networks, with Paul Bonderson, Jr. in 1995. Brocade launched in 1998 and went public in May 1999, and its CEO was convicted for illegal backdating of options in January 2008. In addition to being a co-founder, Malavalli served as CTO of Brocade.

In 2001, Malavalli co-founded InMage, an independent software company.

In 2003, Malavalli became the first Indian member of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He also serves as chairman of the company. He was also an investor in Edurite Technologies, which was later acquired by Pearson Education.

Philanthropy

In 2004, Malavalli donated $1 million toward the creation of the University of California at Santa Cruz’s endowed Kumar Malavalli Chair in Storage Systems Research.

Malavalli is a co-founder and trustee of the Indus Trust, which builds schools that are not affordable by the middle class population of India. He is also the principle investor of TeleVital, a company that provides telemedicine services to rural areas in India.

Malavalli is the chairman and a funder of the India Community Center in Milpitas, California. He also serves as a trustee of the American India Foundation and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He sits on the board of The Indus Entrepreneurs’ Silicon Valley Chapter and the San Francisco-Bangalore Sister City Initiative.

In 2013, Malavalli was awarded the Immigrant Heritage Award for his philanthropic work in the United States and India.