The life of Taher Madraswala is a story of an indomitable spirit—a man who survived hunger and adversity to support his family while building himself along the way. Now leading the semiconductor division at Quest Global, his journey stands as nothing short of extraordinary. This is his story as written by EFY’s Yashasvini Razdan…
Born into a family with a business at its core, young Taher’s birth coincided with his parents’ move from Madras to Calcutta. The eldest of three boys, Taher was a mischievous child, quite unlike the conventional eldest son expected to be responsible and disciplined. Up until the age of ten, Taher showed no entrepreneurial aspirations, nor any inclination towards academic brilliance. Scraping through exams and spending his time playing gully cricket, he relied on grace marks to pass from one grade to the next.
With a carefree zest for life, Taher enjoyed his childhood to the fullest—until everything changed when he was ten. His father, Husein Madraswala, watched a flourishing business collapse, plunging the family into financial ruin and putting an end to his innocent frivolities. With creditors lined outside their house and no money to pay for rent or even two square meals, young Taher’s childhood ended abruptly at the tender age of eleven. Abandoned by their fair-weather friends and relatives, Taher and his family were left to the mercy of the creditors amidst misfortune. With no money to pay for house rent, Taher and his family struggled to keep the rental apartment and pay for school fees. Desperate and hungry, it was at this juncture that Taher’s father suggested leaving Kolkata and going back to their ancestral village in Gujarat.
A question of survival
Taher and his mother, Shirin Madraswala, vehemently opposed this idea. “We had two choices—either return to our hometown in Gujarat, where my grandfather lived, because we could not afford to stay in an expensive city like Calcutta, or face starvation. My mother, despite being uneducated, was determined to educate her children. I believe that who I am today is largely because of her,” shares Taher.
But what could an eleven-year-old schoolboy do to provide for a family of five?
“My mother went around the locality asking for work for me. At 12 years old, all I could do was teach young kids. One kind lady in our neighbourhood gave me my first break and asked me to teach nursery rhymes to her son. She paid me one rupee per lesson, and since I worked every day, I earned 30 rupees in the first month. That was my first salary,” recalls Taher.
His income supplemented his mother’s earnings of 100 rupees from stitching and knitting. “Our total household income was just 130 rupees for the first few months. It was barely enough to survive—we could not even afford an egg a day for our family of five. We did not have proper clothes, and we could not even pay our school fees,” he recalls. While survival was somehow contrived, the purpose of this hand-to-mouth living was to ensure that no Madraswala kid would have to forego their education. Taher’s parents approached the principal of St. Joseph’s College in Bowbazar, requesting assistance with school fees or a possible reduction.
“Our principal agreed and allowed us to continue on the condition that we would pay the fees whenever we could, with an extension of up to two years to clear our dues,” he says.
However, Brother James also warned Taher about his academic performance. “Up until seventh grade, I was just scraping by. If I passed, my mother would celebrate by distributing sweets at home. That was the bar we had set!” he smiles, recalling his youthful idiosyncrasies.
This warning, coupled with a mere thirty rupees as salary, forced Taher to rethink his choices.
“Baa Baa Black Sheep was simple, but 30 rupees a month was not enough! So, I started teaching first graders, then second graders, and eventually third graders. Within a year, I developed a knack for teaching, and instead of teaching one child, I started tutoring six or seven. My earnings increased to more than 300 rupees per month. We were finally able to pay our school fees, though we still could not afford rent or proper meals,” he narrates.
By the time he reached the ninth and tenth grades, he had established himself as a trusted tutor in the locality. “People paid me 100 to 120 rupees per student, and I had 10-12 students, earning around 1000 rupees a month. This was a significant amount at that time, during 1977-79. With this income, we could pay off old debts and slowly stabilise our lives.”
Choosing duty over dreams
With a flourishing tutoring business, young Taher had found a way to support his family whilst continuing his education. But as he finished school, a critical question loomed—what next?
Taher’s first preference was medicine. “I had heard that doctors earned well and were highly respected. Coming from a business community, there were no engineers or doctors in my family, so I thought this would be a good path,” he recalls.
However, his father had other plans. “My father insisted that I pursue engineering instead of medicine. He believed that becoming a doctor would take too long—seven to eight years – whereas engineering was a shorter route. He also worried that if I studied medicine, our household income would drop because I would not be able to earn while studying,” says Taher.
Once again, responsibilities presided over aspirations. Taher respected his father’s decision and enrolled in an engineering programme. But even as an engineering student, his mind constantly worked on ways to sustain himself. While his peers were busy forming friendship bonds, Taher was consumed with a more significant concern—survival. “I had no money. My biggest worry was how to earn while studying. Since I joined Aligarh Muslim University late in the academic year, I had to quickly find a way to earn while maintaining my grades and attendance. I needed to find students, but this was a new city where no one knew me,” he says.
Instead of befriending classmates, he strategically built relationships with decision-makers — the warden, professors, and school administrators. Within three weeks, he had secured his first tutoring job, teaching a teacher’s child from Lady Fatima School, one of the most prestigious schools in Aligarh.
“That was my breakthrough. Once I started teaching her children, she recommended me to others,” he shares. This network of students kept growing, and before long, he was once again balancing a full-fledged tutoring business alongside his engineering studies.
“My classes would finish at 3 pm. I would then return to my hostel and cook dal-chawal or quickly gobble a couple of rotis and sabzi delivered from the kitchen, and by 4pm I was out again, teaching students till 10pm. I did this every single day for five years. When you have responsibilities beyond yourself, you stop making excuses. You just do what needs to be done,” he reflects, pausing to wipe his moist eyes.
His childhood burdens never gave Taher the luxury of dreaming for himself, but dreams have a way of slipping into the mind, uninvited yet persistent. For Taher, a poster of the New York skyline hanging in the college canteen drew stars in his eyes, which up until now hadn’t even gotten a chance to tear up amidst adversity. Every time he sat there, his eyes would drift toward it, mesmerised by its magnificence. “Ek din wahaan toh jaana hi hai!” he would think to himself. The boy who had once been consumed by survival now dared to dream of the Big Apple.
He had a dream; he worked for it
By the time he reached the final years of his engineering degree, something had changed. Initially, I was just trying to survive. But as I became more comfortable managing my studies and work, I started thinking about what came next,” he says. While many of his classmates aspired to become bureaucrats—several went on to become IAS and IPS officers—Taher’s aspirations differed. He wanted to build something of his own. This was the beginning of a mindset shift—from survival to leadership. He realised that success was not just about working hard but about working strategically.
While the New York skyline continued to beckon Taher in his dreams, fate refused to let him off easy. His first attempt at securing a visa was unsuccessful, forcing him to rethink his approach. In the meantime, he took a job at an HCL subsidiary in New Delhi, earning just 1400 rupees per month—less than what he had made as a tutor. As a part of the research and development team at HCL, Taher worked on building computer designs and learning about how global technology companies operated.
Over the next two years, his salary increased from 1400 rupees to 6000 rupees per month. “For someone who had struggled with money all his life, that felt like a fortune,” he recalls.
“If you want to grow, start performing at the next level before you get there,” he advises. “Many people wait for a promotion before they start acting like a leader. That is the wrong approach. The best way to advance is to start doing the work of the next level before you are officially given the title.” This philosophy shaped his career in the years to come.
Alongside a colleague, Balasubramaniam, he started a side business designing electronic doorbells. Utilising reverse engineering, he expanded into designing other products, developing a deeper understanding of how to build and innovate. “That was my first experience with product design—taking something apart, understanding it, and then improving it,” he says.
Amidst all this, he was focused on his goal of studying in the US and managed to save up to ₹32,000 in two years. He dedicated himself to preparing for the Graduate Record Examinations, improving his vocabulary by studying through flashcards while travelling to work. He scored well on the GRE on his second try and secured a scholarship to pursue his master’s degree at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette.
Surviving the American Dream
In 1989, two years after starting his job at HCL, he finally set foot in the United States, closer to his dream of touching the New York skyline—a new chapter in his journey. Taher’s life in the US was no American dream but another battle of survival. The scholarship covered tuition, but he had to figure out a way to sustain himself again.
“When I arrived in the US, I had to start from scratch—find students to tutor, manage finances, and adjust to an entirely different culture. But I had already done this before. I had rebuilt my life in Calcutta and then in Aligarh. This was just another challenge,” he reflects.
Once again, teaching became his lifeline. Amongst his students at the university was an elderly gentleman pursuing an MBA, a man almost his father’s age. “He struggled with math—vector multiplication and other concepts that were completely foreign to him, and reached out to me for tutoring,” Taher recalls.
The student soon became Taher’s family in the foreign land. “He and his wife took me under their wing. They became like my second parents. On my birthday, they even gifted me a brand-new bicycle. That was a huge deal for me at the time,” he says.
To this day, he calls them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ and they remain in touch. “They used to tell people at church, ‘Our son is going to do very well in life.’ Their faith in me meant a lot,” he shares.
Taher balanced his studies and was not afraid of hard work, and he never let his circumstances define him. The US offered him exposure to cutting-edge technology, a fast-paced corporate culture, and a chance to dream bigger than ever before.
Graduating into a recession
In 1991, after two years of rigorous study and constant hustling, Taher graduated with his master’s degree in computer science engineering, which was welcomed by a recession in the US, which had slowed down hiring drastically. “I was told that if you send out 100 applications, maybe two companies will respond,” he recalls.
With no degree from an Ivy League school, Taher knew the odds were stacked against him. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Taher sent out 200 applications and heard back from a startup called HAL Computer Systems. It was not the big-name company he had hoped for, but it was a foot in the door. After four months of working at HAL, he received a call from Intel. A step closer to his dreams, Taher knew that securing a job at Intel would bring stability to his career and a chance to build something new.
Amidst all the chaos of building a career, there was one aspect of life that Taher had not yet given much thought to—marriage. With his life revolving around academics, work, and survival, relationships had never been a priority.
“Back in Calcutta, all the girls I had taught called me ‘Sir.’ There was never any romantic angle because they saw me as a teacher, someone to be respected, not pursued. And by the time I was ready to think about marriage, most of them were already married!” he laughs.
With each passing day, his mother, like a typical Indian mom, was worried that Taher would never settle down. So, when he visited India after securing his job at Intel, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
“I had one condition—I wanted to marry a professional woman. In the US, life as a homemaker can be isolating, and I did not want my wife to feel that way. She had to have a career of her own,” he says.
His cousin, who lived in Nagpur, introduced him to Farida, a doctor from the city, who would become his life partner. They got married in 1992. “I couldn’t become a doctor, but we do have a doctor’s degree in our house,” he quips!
They have now been married for 32 years and have a daughter who works as a nurse. “She gave me the freedom to chase my ambitions, and I gave her the same. She became the assistant chief of a hospital, and I became a CEO. We both grew together,” he reflects.
Despite all his achievements, the relationships he has built—both personal and professional—are what he holds closest to his heart.
Tutor turned trailblazer
At Intel, Taher started as an engineer working on microprocessors. He was part of the team that designed the Pentium processors—technology that would eventually power millions of computers worldwide.
“I worked on four versions—Pentium I, II, III, and Itanium. The first time, it was incredibly challenging. But after the fourth version, it became repetitive,” he shares. He had reached a point where he wanted more. More challenges, more learning, and more opportunities to innovate.
In the 1990s, Intel was at its peak and held nearly 90% of the microprocessor market, looking for ways to expand beyond computing. They saw an opportunity in supplying silicon to networking and communication—a space that companies like Cisco were rapidly dominating. Taher saw this as his next challenge. “I had spent years working on processors, and the move from computing to communications was something new,” he says.
However, fate had something else planned. Despite investing billions into the communication sector, Intel failed to win market share from TI, PMC-Sierra, Broadcom, and Conexant. “We spent billions acquiring companies, but the experiment failed. With that, my career also took a hit,” he admits.
But failure had never stopped him before. And it was not about to stop him now.
During this time, Taher and his friends at Intel identified a gap in the semiconductor industry. Outsourcing chip development was an expensive and inefficient process, dominated by large corporations charging exorbitant prices. “We realised that semiconductor design was overpriced. Instead, we could design and get semiconductor chips manufactured at much lower prices and still be profitable,” he explains.
Seeing an opportunity to disrupt the industry, he and his colleagues took a leap of faith. In 2003, Taher joined Open-Silicon, a company focused on making chip development more accessible and affordable. The Open-Silicon team pitched their idea to investors and secured $45 million in funding. “At the time, this was a massive amount—equivalent to around $300 million today,” he says.
Within a few years, Open-Silicon became a success story, challenging industry giants and lowering the barriers for startups to develop their own chips. In 2007, the company was bought over by a private equity firm for $200 million. Many of the original founders exited over time and moved on, but Taher stayed. “By then, money was no longer my motivation. I wanted to build something bigger,” he says. He continued as CEO, leading the company till it was sold again in 2018.
A leader without a company
In 2018, after years of hard work and leadership, circumstances forced Taher to sell Open-Silicon. The company’s investor, a private equity firm, needed the cash, and Taher had no choice but to let go of the company he and his friends had built. It was another setback. But by then, Taher had learned one of the most valuable lessons of all—failure is never the end.
“I did not want to sell. It was heartbreaking. I had to let go of something I had built from the ground up,” he recalls. After dedicating 15 years to Open-Silicon, he left a successful startup that had grown into an industry disruptor. But now, for the first time in years, he was not leading a company.
Money had stopped being a concern long back for Taher. Still, the urge to make a mark was strong, so he teamed with another entrepreneur to build an ASIC business at Invecas Corp. Unfortunately, Covid disrupted those plans also, and Taher went back to where it all started—Intel.
Returning to Intel in 2020, Taher took on the role of Vice President and General Manager in the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) division. His mission? To take on Nvidia by creating custom silicon solutions with the Graphics IP that Intel owns and establish Intel as a leader in the graphics industry. It was a high-stakes challenge. Nvidia had long dominated the GPU market, and catching up would require a combination of innovation, strategy, and execution.
“We believed that we could change the industry. Intel originally started its graphics division years ago during my first tenure at Intel. I knew the team, I knew the technology, and I truly believed we could beat Nvidia,” he shares.
However, the reality of corporate decision-making often clashes with vision. Despite efforts to build a competitive GPU business, the challenges were immense. Intel struggled to fund the custom silicon business, and in 2022, the company decided to shut down that part of the graphics division. It was another setback, another failure. “My first failure at Intel was when I switched from Processor to Communications division in the late 1990s. The second was when I took on the responsibility of proliferating the Graphics Xe architecture through custom silicon,” he reflects.
But if there was one thing Taher had learned from his journey, it was that failure is never the end.
| Some of Taher’s favourites |
| Favourite Movie: Sholay Favourite Actor: Amitabh Bachchan Favourite Actress: Hema Malini Favourite Food: Dal chawal Favourite Drink: Diet Coke Favourite Travel Destination: The Galápagos Islands Favourite Book: Homo Sapiens Favourite Sport: Cricket Real-Life Role Model/Inspiration: Mother Favourite Quote: Wake up every morning and do your best. Everyone—whether it is a human, an animal, or even the tiniest bacteria—gets 24 hours in a day. The key to a fruitful life is making the most of those 24 hours, every single day. |
The quest for something new
At this point, Taher had seen it all—success, failure, entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, and even the pain of losing a company he built. He had reached a stage where he could have retired comfortably. But that was never his style. It was then that Quest Global produced an opportunity.
The CEO and CBO of Quest Global shared a vision with Taher to create a generational company and take Quest Global public someday.
That one sentence reignited something in Taher. “I had always wanted to take Open-Silicon public, but circumstances had prevented it. Now, here was another chance to do it, one more time,” he narrates.
After careful consideration, he agreed to take on the challenge. He joined Quest Global, in its semiconductor division, with the goal of assisting the company toward an IPO. News reports have been rife with probable dates and figures for an IPO valuation, but Taher remains unfazed by any report with a calm, stoic smile that perseveres through decades of struggle and turmoil.
Looking back at his career, Taher acknowledges that the road has not always been smooth. Carrying the pride of massive successes and the despair of bitter failures, he advises, “Ambition alone is not enough. You can have a vision, but if you do not execute it flawlessly, you will not reach your goal.”
He also believes that true leadership is about working at the next level before you get there. “If you want to grow, you have to start acting like the person you aspire to be. Do not wait for a title to start behaving like a leader,” he says.
After all these years, his biggest motivation remains the same—helping others grow. “For a long time, I have taught maths and science to underprivileged kids. At this stage of my life, if I can impact someone’s life the way my mentors impacted mine, then I would have done something meaningful,” he says.
As for what he wants to be remembered for? His answer is simple: “If just one person says, ‘If it were not for Taher, I would not be here,’ then I know I have done my job.”
