When faced with the daunting challenge of fighting cancer, Google Inc. (GOOG) VP Venkat Panchapakesan (@venkatp) vowed to face it in the same manner he greeted the world of technology -- with unbreakble determination. In February he remarked in an email to a former colleague shared with RE/Code:
I am handling it with the same positive spirit that I do anything else.
Sadly, this week RE/Code shared the news that on Monday night Panchapakesan -- only 49 years young based according to the records I found -- lost his battle with the disease which has felled other tech luminaries, as well, including Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iconic cofounder and former chief executive, Steve Jobs.
However, while he's gone he's certainly not forgotten. He leaves behind a wife -- Sandy -- and two children. He also leaves by a wealth of contribution to a variety of top internet firms.
Late YouTube engineering chief and Google VP, Venkat Panchapakesan
Starting his career in 1990, he went on as a manager at Hewlett-Packard Comp. (HPQ) from 1995 to 1997. After departing from HP he would jump into the online services space in the midst of the dotcom boom. He would spend the rest of his career at internet firms, navigating through the lean years after the Dotcom bubble burst and the "Web 2.0" resurgence that followed over the course of the last decade.
Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) owes much of its success in southeast Asia to Panchapakesan, who joined the company just four years after its founding. As an early executive he worked from 1998 to 2009, serving in a variety of roles and garnering numerous praise and accolades. Sharad Sharma, the former Yahoo! India VP whom Panchapakesan wrote the above email message to, described him as a "sharp yet humble" leader who brought a "childlike zest" to the internet services space.
His cousin Anand Chandrasekaran also worked at Yahoo! briefly and currently serves as chief product officer for Indian telecom Bharti Airtel Ltd. (BOM:532454) cited him as an inspiration, stating, "[Panchapakesan is a] hero to many."
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