Obama honours three Indian-Americans for innovative start-ups

President Barack Obama, who turned 54 on Tuesday, decided to celebrate his birthday by inviting to the White House a host of young business leaders to demonstrate their innovations. Recipients of the rare honour included three Indian-American innovators — Privahini Bradoo from San Francisco, Ann Marie Sastry from Michigan and Suma Reddy from New York.

“As a birthday treat to me, I thought I’d invite business leaders, investors, and Government officials here for the first-ever White House Demo Day,” Obama said amid cheers from the gathering at the State Dining Room and went round the hall for a close look at the exhibits set up by the innovators.

He lauded start-ups that now account for almost 40 per cent of new hires in America. 

“As we’ve fought back from the worst economic crisis of our lifetime, those firms have helped our private sector create more than 12.8 million jobs over the last 64 straight months, which is the longest streak of private sector job growth on record,” he said. The Indian-American innovations, listed by the White House, included Bradoo’s BlueOak venture that recycles critical metals from e-waste such as mobile phones, Sastry’s firm, Shakti, that uses materials science to develop the next generation of solid state lithium batteries to power mobile phones, computers and even cars, and Reddy’s Waddle discovery platform that helps people to find the best places to go by using friends’ ratings, reviews and recommendations.