Interviewed by Chris Bajorek on 2025-09-10
© Computer History Museum
Mr. Raghuram was born in India in 1962. His father was an entrepreneur and his mother a homemaker. He played a lot of cricket as a child as well as field hockey and volleyball. He found that team sports were a formative experience in his youth. For college, he attended the Indian Institute of Technology where he earned a master’s degree in physics and then switched to EE and earned a second master’s in 1986.
Upon graduation, he went to work for the large Indian consulting company, Tata. Tata had a partnership with the US company, Unisys, and he quickly moved on to Unisys because he found the work more interesting. This move also enabled him to come to the US in 1989. He worked with Unisys for a few years, before quitting and going to Wharton business school in 1994.
Upon graduation in 1996 from Wharton, Raghu moved west to join Netscape in Mt. View CA. He was hired by Ben Horowitz, now a famous venture capitalist. Ben taught him the skills to be a great product manager. After Netscape was bought by AOL, Raghu moved onto Bang Networks, another startup based on building apps for the Internet. Bang suffered in the dotcom bust and he had to move on once again. This time to VMware, where he would spend the next 20 years.
The rest of the interview focuses on his long and successful career at VMware, where he rose from product manager to CEO. During this period VMware grew very rapidly, was partially purchased by Dell Computer and then totally purchased by Broadcom in a very lucrative deal. After the acquisition, he continued to consult for Broadcom but mainly took a break and began looking at his next venture with the goal of joining a company which has a chance to make a major impact.
- Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102808967
Visit https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/oral-history for more information about the Computer History Museum’s Oral History Collection.
Catalog number: 102808968
Acquisition number: 2024.0017
About The Author
