Kumar Malavalli is an Indian American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} In 1995, he founded Brocade Communications Systems with Paul Bonderson Jr. He currently serves as chairman of C3DNA Inc. and as a partner at VKRM Services, a boutique investment firm.^[2][7] He has also served on the boards of the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Fibre Channel Industry Association.^[10][11]

Malavalli was presented with an honorary doctor of science degree by California State University, East Bay in 2013.^[7] The Kumar Malavalli Endowed Chair in Storage Systems Research at the University of California Santa Cruz's Jack Baskin School of Engineering was established in 2004 following a $1 million donation from Malavalli.^[7][12][13] Professor Darrell Long currently holds the Kumar Malavalli Chair.^[13]

Malavalli is a member of the Silicon Valley Hall Engineering Hall of Fame.^[6][14]

Malavalli was born in early February 1943 in Mysore, Karnataka, India.^{[citation needed]} He moved to Düsseldorf, Germany in 1972 following his graduation from the National Institute of Engineering with a bachelor's degree in engineering.^[12] After graduating from the Institute of Engineering in Düsseldorf with a master's degree in industrial electronics, Malavalli moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.^[12]

In Toronto, Malavalli worked for Canstar Communications’ fibre channel group, which was later acquired by Hewlett-Packard.^[12] While at Hewlett-Packard, he served on American National Standards Institute's T11 Technical Committee, which established universal standards for fibre channel.^[10][13][15]

Malavalli co-founded Brocade Communications, a producer of storage area networks, with Paul Bonderson, Jr. in 1995.^{[1][3][4][16]} Brocade launched in 1998 and went public in May 1999, and its CEO was convicted for illegal backdating of options in January 2008.^{[citation needed]} In addition to being a co-founder, Malavalli served as CTO of Brocade.^[17]

In 2001, Malavalli co-founded InMage, an independent software company.^[2][9][17]

He was awarded the International Committee for Information Technology Standards’ 2002 Gene Milligan Award for his work chairing an INCITS committee, which developed 17 standards for storage area networks.^[10][18][19]

In 2003, Malavalli became the first Indian member of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame.^[6][14]

Malavalli co-founded Glassbeam, a software-as-a-service vendor, in 2009 with Puneet Pandit.^[20] He also serves as chairman of the company.^[20]

Malavalli was appointed InMage CEO in 2011.^[2][9]

Other companies whose boards Malavalli has served on include CryptoMill Technologies and LeadFormix (then-known as LeadForce1).^[21][22] He was also an investor in Edurite Technologies, which was later acquired by Pearson Education.^[23][24]

In 2004, Malavalli donated $1 million toward the creation of the University of California at Santa Cruz’s endowed Kumar Malavalli Chair in Storage Systems Research.^[7][12][13] He is also a benefactor of Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research, with donations totaling over $500,000.^[25]

Malavalli is a co-founder and trustee of the Indus Trust, which builds schools that are not affordable by the middle class population of India.^[4][8][15] Hindu BL, The Indus Trust is headed by Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray.^{[4][8][15][26]} He is also the principle investor of TeleVital, a company that provides telemedicine services to rural areas in India.^[1][27]

Malavalli is the chairman and a funder of the India Community Center in Milpitas, California.^[5][28][29] He also serves as a trustee of the American India Foundation and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.^[12][30][31] He sits on the board of The Indus Entrepreneurs’ Silicon Valley Chapter and the San Francisco-Bangalore Sister City Initiative.^[13][32][33]

In 2013, Malavalli was awarded the Immigrant Heritage Award for his philanthropic work in the United States and India.^[34]