Abbas Sadriwala

History

Sadriwalla is himself of Mewari origin. His father comes from the village of Bari Sadri in the Mewar region of Rajasthan (hence the name Sadriwalla), from where he migrated to Mumbai as a penniless teenager. After working for several years with a rubber products company, he set up his own rubber firm which eventually grew into Rubber Industries India Pvt Ltd, one of the largest rubber products manufacturers in India till the 1970s.

Sadriwalla had to take charge of the family rubber business at the age of 18 after his father died prematurely in 1966. But he wanted to become a pilot, and opted to move to the United States in 1973 to pursue his dream, leaving the family fortune to his three siblings.

Sadriwalla started life in the US from scratch, working in a string of shop floor jobs while financing his own pilot training. "I arrived," he remembers, "with very little money in my pocket." In 1976, he qualified as a commercial pilot and trained further to become a pilot instructor. Between 1978 and 1984, he taught flying in South Florida. Always a technology buff, Sadriwalla spotted an opportunity to supply special purpose computers to the aviation industry in 1990 and successfully launched a company called ADS (Application Designed Systems) Associates. After specialty computers became less relevant in a rapidly changing technology marketplace, he diversified into the pager business and built a highly profitable company called Pageco International to manufacture pager crystals. As pagers were displaced by cell phones, Abbas moved into Wi-Fi technology. Pursuing his interest in R&D Sadriwalla is currently the CEO of Liquiguard Technololgies, Inc., a specialty coatings manufacturer that develops unique coating solutions for everyday objects. The more than 60 different coatings developed at Liquiguard are all water based and eco-bio friendly. The thrust of these coatings is to replace existing hazardous products with more feature rich, safer and easy to use products. Among the unique coatings with global implications is 'Galvacote', a corrosion protection coating that protects steel from corroding by simulating the electro-chemical action of hot dip galvanizing. This product has the potential of propelling Liquiguard Technologies to great heights given the fact that the global GDP annually loses some three trillion dollars due to infrastructure corrosion.

Awards and honors

Sadriwalla was named Businessman of the Year in 2004 by the apex level National Republican Congressional Committee, in a ceremony presided over by US President George Bush. Sadriwalla has also been awarded The Colonel James Tod International Award by the Maharana Mewar Foundation in Udaipur.

Personal life

Sadriwalla lives in Fort Lauderdale with his wife Deborah and sons Abbas and Alexander.