Carving Their Destiny

Renu and Kedar Gupta. (Courtesy of Kedar Gupta)

When GT Solar launched its second attempt at an IPO in 2008, just days before the financial meltdown, it raised a whopping $600 million, providing liquidity to the top five shareholders, which included co-founders Kedar Gupta and Jon Talbott, who started the solar tech company in 1994 in Gupta’s basement with only $1,000.

“It was a proud moment for us that our initial $1,000 could have such an outstanding return,” Gupta writes in his recently self-published business memoir, “Carving My Destiny.” “A few friends have asked me how much money I made selling GT Solar. They had estimated the amount when GT Solar went through the IPO. I often thought about ending their curiosity and telling them the exact amount, but then I thought better of it. My answer at this stage is simple: I made more than I needed and less than I expected. To their frustration and my amusement, I have kept my friends guessing,” Gupta states toward the end of the book.

GT Solar, a Nashua-based company that began as GT Equipment Technologies, producing crystal puller technology for the semiconductor and solar industries, may have started with that $1,000 investment, but Gupta’s entrepreneurial journey started long before that when he traveled from India to America in 1968 with just $8 in his pocket to pursue his doctorate—his first time outside India.

Well, it actually started with $5 by the time he arrived in the United States, having spent $3 on a candy bar during a long layover in France. “I took the plunge. Sitting with this prized possession and thrilled to devour it all by myself, a curious fact struck me. I realized that my total net worth had plummeted by almost 40 percent. Thankfully, the shock of this loss vanished as soon as I ate the Cadbury bar. I justified my purchase with the idea that my net worth dropping was not a critical matter for my trip to New York. If I got into trouble, I would have the same fate whether I had $8 or $5.”

After earning his doctoral degree, Gupta landed a job at Monsanto in Missouri, a Fortune 500 company supplying silicon wafers to semiconductor device companies. Within months of starting, Gupta noticed a problem with the company’s production line but was told by his boss to focus on his own work. Gupta did, but he also worked on the production problem as an unofficial side project and came up with a solution. Fearing how his boss would react, Gupta left a sample product on the desk of his boss’s superior instead. In the book, Gupta describes coming in the next day to find top managers were waiting for him, and he thought he was being fired. Instead they applauded him and implemented his solution, which led to him being named Engineer of the Year by the company. However, his decision to go around his boss permanently soured
their relationship.

After a year, Gupta visited his family in India who insisted he meet a young woman named Renu. After a few meetings they decided to get married, and he brought his new bride back to the United States, where they became, he writes, true partners “in every sense of the word.”

Renu has been the voice that has encouraged her husband to act on his dreams and through some of his darkest hours. In 1985, the couple moved the family to NH when Kedar landed a job as general manager and vice president at Ferrofluidics. His first day on the job he walked in to find the workforce on the production floor had been cut in half since his initial interview and was told the company had lost an expected $10 million order.

It was there he met Jon Talbot, a product manager who started on the same day as Gupta. The two worked to set up a successful division within the company but, overall, Ferrofluidics experienced a financial roller coaster ride and Kedar found himself at odds with members of the executive team. It came to a head when Kedar returned from a business trip to Germany and was informed the company was replacing his position to have him focus on marketing.

He and Talbot decided they were ready to start their own business based on a technology that Ferrofluidics had decided not to pursue. When he informed his boss about what he was thinking, he was asked to resign on the spot. He and Talbot were able to negotiate a deal and then found themselves in the parking lot trying to figure out how they were going to tell their wives they were suddenly unemployed and starting their own company. So they got flowers and took them out to lunch. To their surprise, their wives were more curious than upset, grilling them about their plans and ultimately supporting their decision.

They started GT Equipment in the basement of Kedar’s home and focused on cultivating relationships with clients. That relationship building allowed them to ask customers to advance 35% of an order’s payment upfront and pay the rest when it shipped—which financed the company’s growth.

It wasn’t long before Renu joined the company. She was working in real estate as her husband was getting his new venture off the ground, a career she enjoyed. She had no desire to leave it but Kedar needed help. “I told my broker, ‘I will be back in two months.’ He said, ‘You are not going to come back.’ I said, ‘I will.’ The rest is history,” she says during an interview. Renu worked with the company’s finances and customers. “I still have the balance sheet with the first check for $220,000 from the first customer,” Renu says.

Kedar prides himself on making “the customer king.” It is a lesson he learned from his father. Gupta grew up in India in a small town called Ballia where his father was a wholesaler of rolls of fabric. He worked for his father part time, learning to put the customer first and other lessons that would set him on his career path.

And he told Kedar, “When competing, do not look back to see who is gaining on you. Your focus should be on your path and pace. You should not be changing your path or slowing your pace based on who is looking or competing. It is you who decides the pace of your growth and learning,” Kedar recalls in his book.

Within three years of launching, revenue had grown from $869,000 to $9.2 million and the company had customers throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In 1998, GT Equipment Technologies landed on Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of the 20 Fastest Growing Companies in the United States, and Kedar and Talbot were featured on the cover of Business NH Magazine as the fastest growing private company in NH. “By early 2000, GT Equipment was a dominating force in the solar business worldwide with its supply of DSS crystal pullers and wire saws,” Kedar writes.

In an interview, Kedar says he wanted to find a way to have an impact in the world. “Just making money and running a company for money is not my cup of tea,” he says. “It must make the change in the world,” he says. “We sparked the solar revolution.”

GT’s employee count grew to 150, and the company built a large headquarters in Merrimack. It secured funding to grow, including a loan from Fleet Bank. However, German elections delayed a solar subsidy for the company there and the SARS outbreak in China impeded installation of solar lines for its customers. Fleet Bank informed GT it had defaulted on the loan terms for its building and suspended GT’s line of credit demanding full payment on the loan.

It created a crisis in the company that Kedar and Renu faced together, with Renu coming to her husband’s defense when his control over the company was challenged.  (A chapter about this crisis is excerpted, with permission, in this issue.)

GT not only survived but continued to grow. Gupta details the challenges along the way in his book, including the first failed IPO and his decision to leave the company before its second successful IPO launch. (The company changed it name to GT Advanced Technologies in 2011, but a failed deal with Apple led the company to bankruptcy in 2014 from which it emerged in 2016 and was acquired by Onsemi in 2021.)

While GT Solar was Gupta’s most successful business, it was not his last. Gupta, a restless entrepreneur also created SC Fluids, which handled the supercritical fluid business for semiconductor companies, during his time at GT and attracted IBM as a partner.

After his exit from GT Solar, Gupta launched ARC Energy in Nashua, which developed a new manufacturing process for ultra-efficient LED lights. Its meteoric rise attracted the attention of the White House and prompted a visit to the company by President Barack Obama. However, changing market pressures eventually led to winding the business down.

In his book, Gupta compares the entrepreneurial journey to a Hindi poem he read as a child that describes a droplet of rain’s journey plummeting from a cloud to the earth. “It was a hot summer’s day, and the tiny droplet was thinking about its future. The droplet did not know what would happen to it. Would it hit the hot pavement and disintegrate, or would it drop into an ocean and lose its identity? Eventually, something better happens. It falls into the mouth of an oyster and becomes a pearl,” he writes.

The couple continue to invest in startups (25 to date) and are also philanthropists, including supporting causes dedicated to helping children. They are donating all proceeds from the sales of “Carving My Destiny,” which is available on Amazon, to charity. It is obvious the couple is enjoying their latest chapter. Recalling being asked by a mentor what is happiness, Kedar writes, “I struggled at the time to reply. Today, I can proudly say that joy is about having control over one’s destiny. This control is what entrepreneurs strive to have.”