BOSTON—For a small-town boy who grew up in Kota in Rajastahan, who didn’t know what he wanted to do in his life, building a company from scratch and then selling it for $900 million is not an ordinary feat. Greatly influenced by his parents in early childhood, Mukesh Chatter learned idealism from his mother.

His father taught him life’s core values, but also gave a dose of pragmatism. “If somebody slaps you three times, at least you should punch back once,” Chatter recalled his father telling him.

In an exclusive video interview with Dr. Manju Sheth on ‘Chai With Manju’, Chatter talks about his journey from Kota to Boston, his values, and his philosophy. To view the full interview, please click here.

Chatter is a successful high tech entrepreneur and current co-manager of investment firm NeoNet Capital. In 1999, Chatter sold his Nextabit Networks for $900 million to Lucent Technologies. He had co-founded Nextabit in 1996 with his wife, Preeti. He also founded NeoSaej Corp. and Axiowave Networks Inc.

Chatter has more than 20 years of experience in the architecture, design and development of networking equipment and supercomputers and has several patents associated with this work. Last year, he received TiE-Boston’s 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award.

When Chatter received TiE-Boston award,  he said that his wife been a key partner in his entrepreneurial journey. “One is none and two is one. That is how me and Preeti have done together.”

While growing up, Chatter always thought big and wanted to be the best he could, but had never imagined the way success will follow him.

“A lot of this just driven by luck,” says Chatter, who purposefully decided to study electronics at BITs Pilani. “My dad was a lawyer, my uncle was a lawyer and my brother was a lawyer.”

Thus, Chatter decided to pursue engineering, but then a few dangers loomed: civil engineering could lead to accidents and electrical and chemical engineering could also be hazardous. “In electronics, only six volts” he thought and decided to pursue that and that eventually brought him to the United States, and the rest is history.

To learn more about Chatter, please click on the video.