Unplugged Gurus; When most people in high-tech were focusing on selling stuff over the Internet, a few were thinking outside the box.(Cover Story)

Byline: N'Gai Croal, Sudip Mazumbar, B.J. Lee and William Underhill

We know Bill Gates as the father of Windows, Steve Jobs as the man behind the iPod, and Sergei Brin and Larry Page as the geeks who brought us Google. When it comes to the new wireless revolution, however, many of its pioneers aren't even as well known as American Idol reject William Hung. Here is an eclectic mix of communications gurus who helped change our lives.

RAJIV MODY

CHAIRMAN, SASKEN LTD.

The next time a New Yorker dials 911 on a cell phone and his location pops up on the emergency operator's screen, the caller should thank an unassuming software engineer thousands of miles away in Bangalore, India. The man is 46-year-old Rajiv Mody, founder and chairman of Sasken Ltd., one of the world's leading providers of wireless-communications software. When Japan's NEC was looking for a way to provide two-way wireless video-conferencing, it turned to Sasken, and so have companies like Ericsson, Intel and Sharp as they sought to upgrade their products' multimedia capabilities.

This icon of Indian technology was founded, oddly enough, in a Silicon Valley garage, on about $40,000 of Mody's savings. Two years later, in 1991, Mody--who was born in Gujarat state and educated at Brooklyn Polytechnic--moved his fledging company to Bangalore, a daring step at a time when Indian bureaucracy and currency regulations still laid down a formidable barrier to international business. The move gave him an edge in hiring the best graduates of India's technical universities, and helped infuse Sasken with an austere corporate culture. Everyone works in identical cubicles and flies coach class--modesty inspired by Mody's two great heroes, Mahatma Gandhi and Warren Buffett. Austere but, at the same time, ferocious: "Everybody in this country has fire in his or her belly," Mody says. "We have a great future before us."

ANTHONY TOWNSEND