Farhad “Fred” Ebrahimi, former chief executive of Quark, is building a $500 million planned community in India to fulfill a 25-year-old dream.
Quark City in Punjab will house 25,000 workers on 50 acres of land. Ebrahimi bought the land about a year ago and expects to see the development up and running within four years.
“I am in love with India,” Ebrahimi said on Friday during a Diplomats Ball Seminar at the Grand Hyatt Denver. “There are very few places in the world you can go and really make a difference in human life.”
He acknowledges the project hasn’t been easy.
“(India) is a painful place to be in,” Ebrahimi said. “For those who are considering serious investment in India, you should know the truth about the problems, the agonies involved in doing business there.”
Bureaucracy is rampant, he said, and “everything is controlled.”
Ebrahimi lives in India for most of the year and led the outsourcing of much of Quark’s software programming to India. Quark now employs about 1,500, with about 170 employees in Cheyenne and Denver.
Ebrahimi emigrated to the U.S. from Iran and joined Quark in 1986, at one point owning half of the company. In 2004, he was replaced as chief executive by Kamar Aulakh. Aulakh left the company earlier this month, and Quark has an interim president while searching for a new chief executive.
Ebrahimi rarely makes public comments but said on Friday that Quark is “doing fantastic.”
“There’s tremendous praise about everything,” and customer service has improved “significantly,” he said.
Ebrahimi was much more interested in discussing Quark City, which he says creates jobs in India and improves life for the poor. As chairman of Quark City, he plans to build schools, a college and entertainment sites, along with office buildings and homes.
“That’s our experiment – to see if it works or not,” he said.
Dell is committed to locating employees at Quark City, Ebrahimi said. Quark also will have an operation there.
“We already have many, many companies that would like to relocate to India, if they are in an environment they can trust,” Ebrahimi said.
Energy is expensive in India, so Ebrahimi is trying to cut usage in half by doing such things as orienting the buildings to minimize absorption of heat.
He said he is accumulating 5,000 acres of land and hopes to replicate Quark City in other places within India. He said his commitment to the government is to create 100,000 jobs, a quarter of which would be for college-educated workers.
“All these software businesses … (are) only helping the upper crust. It is not trickling down,” Ebrahimi said.
“Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against profit,” he said, “but my No. 1 reason for being there is to do something. I’m so proud of this.”
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-820-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
