Umang Gupta, a Silicon Valley executive who helped drive two trends in business software while blazing a trail for Indian-born entrepreneurs, died on Tuesday at his home in San Mateo, Calif. He was 73.
After learning he had terminal cancer, Mr. Gupta decided to take his own life using prescribed medication as allowed under California law, as he wrote in a farewell letter to friends and family that was shared with The New York Times.
When Mr. Gupta arrived in Silicon Valley in 1978, computing chores were typically carried out on large machines running programs supplied by the manufacturers. He was part of a new breed of entrepreneurs, like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Oracle's Larry Ellison.
Personal computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s expanded that industry. The PC gradually took over many business tasks, exchanging files over networks with larger machines in an industry trend called client-server computing.
Mr. Gupta was one of the earliest employees of the company and he was the one who wrote the first formal business plan. In 1984 he left to start Gupta Technologies, which offered one of the first databases for PCs and programming tools that allowed companies to write applications in a client-server style.
Mitchell Kertzman is a managing director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and he said Umang was a real pioneer in the client-server world.
In 1993, Mr. Gupta took his company public, a breakthrough for a software concern led by an Indian executive. Many of his countrymen would play important roles in tech companies.
Gupta Technologies ran into stiff competition fromOracle, Microsoft and Mr. Kertzman's Powersoft, and the company ultimately failed. Mr. Gupta left the company. After changing its name, it faded from prominence.
In a recent interview, he said his departure was the hardest thing he had ever done.
Mr. Gupta reinvented himself in time to catch the next major wave in technology: the rise of the internet. He invested in and later became chief executive of Keynote Systems, a company that developed software that companies used to monitor the efficiency of their websites.
Unlike most other companies of the era, he chose to run the software online and sell it as a subscription service.
Mohan Gyani said that he was ahead of his time in thinking about where things were going and what would happen next.
In 1999 Mr. Gupta took the public by storm. He raised $350 million more in a secondary offering in early 2000 which helped him ride out the tech bust.
He retired from business software after selling his company, Keynote, for $400 million to a private equity firm. Kanwal Rekhi, a veteran Silicon Valley tech executive and investor who served on the board of Gupta Technologies, said that he kept a high profile as a philanthropist and worked with alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology.
Gunjan Bagla, the chief executive of Amritt, who helped lead the group with Mr. Gupta, said that members of the I.I.T. group included figures from industry, academia and the investment community who could often strongly disagree with one another on a range of topics.
Umang was an exceptional leader who could calm a group.
Ved Prakash Gupta, who worked at India's labor ministry, and Ramnika Gupta, a politician, were the parents of Umang Gupta. The parents of Umang met at the funeral of Mohandas Gandhi, a departure from traditional arranged marriages.
Umang was raised by grandparents after the couple separated.
He was expected to join the National Defense Academy, a tradition of his mother's family, after four years at a military boarding school. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from I.I.T. Kanpur. Some of the first IBM computers in India were located at the campus.
He went to the United States to get an M.B.A. and was offered a teaching assistant position at Kent State University. He was a salesman for IBM after earning that degree.
Mr. Gupta contemplated returning to India. He met Ruth Pike, a British woman, in 1975. He moved to Silicon Valley after working for an IBM competitor and trying to raise money for his own company. He joined the company in 1981
His wife, daughter, and son survive him. Raji Gupta died at an early age. Umang and Ruth Gupta helped found Raji House, a respite home for disabled children that is associated with the organization Partners and Advocates for Remarkable Children.
Raymond Ocampo said that Mr. Gupta encouraged his colleagues to challenge his thinking. He used leadership traditions from India and the U.S.
The way he led people was based on fundamental Indian family business values, according to Vik Chaudhary, a director of product management at Meta who competed against Gupta Technologies at Oracle before joining that company and later Keynote.
Mr. Gupta helped develop a free app called Reading Racer, which uses speech recognition technology to help children improve their ability to read out loud.
Mr. Gupta said in his farewell letter that he was able to live comfortably for more than two years after his cancer diagnosis. The pain became more severe.
When I can still stand on my own two feet, why should I not go out with dignity?
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