Talat Hasan is not only one of the first founder of Indian high tech companies but the first Indian woman entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Talat was working as a scientist at Signetics Corporation/Philips Research Labs in Sunnyvale, conducting research in semiconductor manufacturing. When she and two co-workers noticed they were getting a lot of inquiries about their new technology, in an area known as characterization and process control, they went back to their company and pitched the idea of spinning off and commercializing this technology. All Talat and her two colleagues wanted was for the company to pay their salaries as they did this. But the company wasn’t interested. So the three started their own company in 1983. They took second mortgages on their homes and borrowed on their credit cards. In 1993, ten years after Prometrix started and became the leading supplier of thin-film measurement tools, it merged with Tencor Instruments. She has since founded another company Sensys Instruments which was later acquired by Therma-Wave. Talat is now working full-time to make the new India Community Center or ICC in Milpitas the largest Indian Center in the U.S.
