Do a quick Google search for Mano Murthy – whose most recent venture, VPN security technology developer Allegro Systems, was acquired by Cisco Systems late last month in a stock deal valued at $181 million – and you won't find much on Mano Murthy the entrepreneur.
What you'll find, instead, is plenty of information on Mano Murthy the film-score composer. Among fans of Indian cinema, Murthy is known for scoring the popular 1997 film America! America! which ran in Indian movie theaters for more than a year, and the 1999 film Nanna Preethiya Hudugi.
Composing music for films is quite a departure from Murthy's high-powered career as the co-founder of three different technology companies, but Murthy has amassed a successful track record in the corporate world despite his extracurricular activities. A year after the launch of VPN security technology developer Allegro Systems, the firm was acquired by Cisco. Previously, Murthy and eight other co-founders started Assured Access Technology, a remote-access server hub developer acquired by Alcatel for $350 million in cash in 1999. And in the late 1980s, he and three associates founded Alantec, builders of land-switching hubs, which was acquired by hub developer Fore in 1996.
Business interests aside, music has always been a priority for Murthy. He played the drums as an undergraduate student of electrical engineering at Bangalore University in India. After coming to the U.S. to do graduate work at the University of California at Davis and Stanford University in the mid-1970s, he studied the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument, with internationally known musician Zakhir Hussain. In 1994, the year that Alantec, the first company he co-founded, went public, Murthy composed, produced and recorded his first album, Bhavamaalika. The next year, he heard that Indian film director Nagathihalli Chandrasekhar, known for working with new talent, was touring the U.S., so Murthy "made it a point" to meet the director and discuss working on the music for his next film. That led to the job composing the score for America! America!
When queried about the relationship between the two fields, Murthy draws a parallel: "Music is made up of beats and measures; it's a lot of math," he says. "There's a system to it, and a logic." And Murthy hints that music is his true passion – he's far more eager to discuss his five years of private composition training than he is to describe the engineering courses he took at U.C. Davis and Stanford toward a master's degree. And he says he might one day return to school to study music.
These days, when the 48-year-old California resident isn't working or composing in his home recording studio, he's spending time with his wife, Lata, and their two high-school-age children watching San Francisco 49ers games. He also makes time to return to India at least twice a year to oversee the recording of his music. As part of the Allegro buyout agreement, Murthy will work at Cisco for the next few years as an engineering manager. After that, he says he might cash in his entrepreneurial chips. "I'd like to help teams come together and find good talent, but I won't be involved in another [company] on a day-to-day basis."
For now, Murthy will continue to pursue both of his interests. "Music is therapeutic, and that's my way of relaxing," he says. "Companies are about building something and working towards a goal. For both, you keep focused and you keep going."
