Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia (born 30 December 1968)^[3] is an Indian American businessman who co-founded the first free web-based email service, Hotmail.com (now Outlook.com) in 1996.^[4] In 2021 he co-founded ShowReel with Javed Yunus and collaborated with Tauseef Ali Rizwan on the entrepreneurship series BCubed . ShowReel initially hosted short videos for job seekers and founders. It has since turned into an AI-based entrepreneurship course.^[5]

Sabeer Bhatia
Born	30 December 1968 (1968-12-30) (age 56)[1] Chandigarh,[2] India
Nationality	Indian-American
Alma mater	BITS Pilani (B.E.) Caltech (B.S.) Stanford University (M.S.)
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Known for	Hotmail.com
Spouse	Tanya Sharma ​ ​ (m. 2008; div. 2013)​
Children	3

Career

Bhatia briefly worked for Apple Inc, as a hardware engineer^[6] and Firepower Systems Inc. He, along with his colleague Jack Smith, set up Hotmail on 4 July 1996, American Independence Day, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based e-mail and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world.^[7]

As president and CEO, Bhatia led Hotmail until its eventual acquisition by Microsoft in 1998 for an estimated $400 million.^{[citation needed]}

Bhatia started a free messaging service called JaxtrSMS. He said that JaxtrSMS would do to SMS what Hotmail did for e-mail. Claiming it to be a disruptive technology, he says that the operators will lose revenue on the reduced number of SMSes on their network but will benefit from the data plan that the user has to buy.^[8] To date, JaxtrSMS service has failed to replicate the success of Hotmail. Recently^[when?], he invested in email collaboration software, ccZen and another e-commerce technology provider E-junkie.

Personal life

Bhatia is of Sindhi Hindu heritage.^[9][10]

Bhatia married Tanya Sharma in 2008 and they have a daughter Arianna. Later, they filed for divorce in January 2013 in a court in San Francisco, citing "irreconcilable differences".^[11]