Ajay Bhatt was born in India in 1957. Bhatt completed his graduation from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. He attained his master's degree from The City University of New York, USA. Soon after completing his master's, he joined Intel as a senior staff architect.
In fact, USB technology didn't make money for anyone. It's because Intel, who owns all patents to the technology as the first backer of Bhatt's USB idea, decided to make it open and royalty-free from the beginning. USB is now considered the de facto standard for connecting different devices. Still, it was met with a lukewarm response when Bhatt first pitched the idea to tech companies, including Apple and Microsoft, in the early '90s.
It was basically creating a single connector that bypassed the need for a separate floppy disk or driver to install each application. But companies had an inherent fear of breaking the existing compatibility functions, Bhatt said, and only Intel, the company he was working for at the time, was bold enough to invest in his idea. Although Intel first backed the idea and began to build support for it into its chips, Apple first shipped a USB, compatible product for end-users, the iMac G3, in August 1998. Soon, Microsoft followed suit when it provided USB support for Windows 98's second edition, and the rest is history.
To share further, Bhatt holds about 30 US patents, and several others are in progress. He was nominated thrice in three years to participate in a Distinguished Lecture Series at various prominent Universities in the USA and Asia region. Bhatt received an Achievement in Excellence Award for his amazing participation and efforts in PCI Express specification development in 2002. Ajay became popular and recognizable after a TV commercial in 2009, which featured actor Sunil Narkar as Ajay Bhatt, who described him as an inventor of USB.