Mr Jim Pinto – Mangalorean Star
Renaissance man Jim Pinto, a Mangalorean settled in San Diego, California (USA) is a retired entrepreneur, who stands tall in the controls business. If I remind you of the song “Rosalin muja mogachen sobith bhangralya kesanche…” he will sound more interesting. Yes, am sure I raised everyone’s eyebrows and brought back those golden memories that made you hum this very old, yet, well known song written by none other than Jim Pinto’s father the late Albert Pinto. Just like his father Jim Pinto is a very creative and self-made man with a dynamic personality. His ideas are innovative and creative, a step ahead from others in the mainstream of electronics business of his time.
Jim Pinto attended High School at St. Germain’s in Bangalore, graduated in 1951 at the age of 14. He attended St. Joseph’s College for Intermediate studies and there after Central College. He Graduated B.Sc (Hons) in Physics in 1957, and M.Sc (Electronics) in 1958. Mr. Pinto joined L.R.D.E in Bangalore for about a year, and then moved to England in 1960.
Jim Pinto lived in England for about 9 years from 1960 -1969. After working 2 years as an electronics engineer, he started an electronics company in 1962 called Kent Precision Electronics, in Tonbridge, Kent. After it was sold in 1968, he moved to the US.
After his initial experience as an entrepreneur, Jim knew that he wanted to do it again, but he needed experience – marketing, sales, and business. Jim Pinto joined Burroughs (computers and disk-drives) in Los Angeles, California (CA) for about a year, to get his feet wet; and then a smaller company called Bissett-Berman where he gained more business experience, and they moved him to San Diego.
After moving to San Diego, Jim decided that this was his home and he incubated for a while, thinking about the founding culture of his own next startup. He visited many of the best known companies that had been founded by engineers like him, to meet and talk with them. He went to HP to meet Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, DEC to meet Ken Olsen, Fluke to meet John Fluke. Jim Pinto’s first startup in England was accidental; he was determined to be more successful this time around. He founded Action in 1972, with a plan and a shoestring. The original product was Action Pak – plug-in building blocks that did all kinds of measurement and control functions – signal-conditioners, controls, limit-alarms, displays, etc. They sold about 2 million modules, with an installed base of over $100m over twenty years in business. At last count, there are about 6 ‘clones’ – US, European and Japanese.
Action Instruments was formed with a large degree of participative management and employee-ownership. People stayed to get involved. Action was featured prominently in Joel Kotkin’s “California Inc.” and was mentioned in Naisbitt’s “Re-inventing the Corporation” as pioneers in participative management. In July ’93. Action was named by INC magazine as one of the Employers of the Year – Workplaces Employees Love and Jim is very proud of that!
Jim Pinto planned to retire at age 60 – Action would be about 30 years old. He looked for the right partner, and chose Eurotherm in England – the largest temperature controller company in the world. He had known the founders since his days in England, and the people-culture was very similar. Eurotherm was a $350m publicly held company, and Action (at about $20m) was their largest acquisition. His intention was to remain with Eurotherm and help plan continued strategic growth. About six months later, Invensys (then about $6b, called Siebe) acquired Eurotherm at a high price. Jim decided not to be involved – too large and structured for his own tastes. So he retired.
Jim Pinto defines retirements as “doing what you choose to do”. After he retired, he became an “angel” investor, speaker, writer, and futurist. His investments are all technology-related – wireless, networking-infrastructure, biotech. His primary interests are technology trends and futures. However, because of his background, he was constantly pulled back into industrial automation. He got involved in strategic planning with companies and people he liked, and help with mergers and acquisitions, etc. Somehow, his JimPinto.com eNews quickly got pulled into the “politics” of the instrumentation business. Since he is not affiliated with any particular company he has no “hidden agenda”, which his reporting reflects. When shuffles go on at the top of major companies, he obtains a lot of the hidden truths from the worker bees who feel they have no one who tells them what’s really going on. And so he has come up with a lot of predictions and prognostications that seem to have hit the right chords. JimPinto.com eNews started reporting the “hidden stories” and it escalated. He says: “I guess I hit a niche, and a nerve – because eNews is growing fast – almost too fast. New signups come in at about 5-10 per day, and circulation has grown to 7,000, with twice that number circulated through email forwarding. I’m not quite sure yet what the “business model” is, or where I’m going with this. But, JimPinto.com will continue as long as it’s fun – which it is, right now!”
Jim Pinto still does a lot of writing, some poetry, and speaking on a variety of topics (used to be mainly business, now increasingly technology futures and social trends). And he does some guest lecturing at the local colleges and universities.
Jim Pinto hails from a family of singers and writers. His sister Nora has a wonderful singing voice and has won many amateur contests at the Bowring and Catholic Club in Bangalore. Singing was his way of life and he played the guitar. He sang while he was in High School and college and he often did Elvis Presley and Harry Belafonte impersonations.
Jim Pinto used to write lot of articles even during his adolescent years. When he was in High School, he wrote detective stories which were published by the Deccan Herald in Bangalore. His stories were about young Jimmy Young who was the son of a police detective and solved the murder cases which stumped his father.
When Jim Pinto started working in England, and the US, he started writing technical articles, and has since published several hundreds over the years. Some of his articles included satirical poetry to liven things up. His poems have since been published in national and international magazines.
Jim Pinto’s website was started primarily as a vehicle for his writings, articles, poetry. When people asked for copies, he’d simply point them to the website. His new writing and speaking interests were in the directions he was being pulled – biosciences, high-bandwidth networking, next-generation Internet, social and ethical topics.
Jim Pinto’s father late Albert M. Pinto, born in Puttur or environs, second son of Sylvester Pinto, who owned a tile factory. One still sees some tiles with the name engraved – Pinto Tile Factory. Late Albert Pinto was the second of 6 boys, and 3 girls. The boys were Gilbert, Albert, Humbert, Cuthbert, Egbert and Norbert. Humbert Pinto became a Jesuit and the first Indian Vice Provincial of the Jesuits in India.
Late Albert Pinto studied Law and became a prominent Lawyer in Bangalore. Had a wonderful singing voice and recorded about a dozen songs on the HMV label. The story goes that he was auditioned, and HMV told him that he sang Indian songs like an Englishman, and English songs like an Indian. So, he wrote his own songs in Konkani and recorded them for HMV. Late Albert Pinto’s best known songs are: Rosalin (written for his wife, Rosalie), “Chowpati” – for Bombay’s Chowpati beach, “Whiskey Bottle”.
Late Albert Pinto also wrote a book (in English), “Of Life and Love” which was available in the Bangalore Public Library for a long time. The book was rebellious and ahead of it’s time, against traditional customs like arranged marriages and dowry.
Jim Pinto’s Mother, late Rosalie Pinto was born in Putter, daughter of Cornelius and Seraphine Pinto. They were very well known in Puttur, and lived for a long time in their ancestral home called “Maria Lodge”. She was the second daughter of 4. Late Albert Pinto was a distant relative, her uncle, and he fell in love with late Rosalie when she was very young. They married when she was about 16, and he 28.
Late Albert Pinto and late Rosalie Pinto had 10 children – 5 boys and 5 girls. The boys were Paul, Peter, John, James and Jude. The girls are: Nora, Dora, Flora, Clara and Laura. Paul became a lawyer, like his father, and for a time, they both had name plates outside their home in Bangalore – A.M. Pinto, Advocate; and P.M. Pinto, Advocate. Paul moved to Bombay, and then England, and is now aged 79 and retired in England. Peter was a prominent Engineer in Bombay, till he retired and is living in Pune. John is a prominent businessman in Bangalore, and owns General Engineering with factories in Peenya, now run by his sons Deepak and Ajit. Jim Pinto is next. And Jude, the youngest is a journalist and writer in Bombay.
Nora, the eldest girl, married Walter Coelho of Pune, and they retired to Bangalore. The next 3 girls became nuns – Dora is Sr. Loretta of the Carmelite nuns from Cochin (Mt. Carmel College in Bangalore) and Flora (Sr. Rosemarie) and Clara (Sr. Clara) are nuns of St. Josephs Convent in Bangalore. Laura, the youngest, lives in Pune.
Jim Pinto was first married in England and his wife is now deceased. Their son David graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, and then did a Master’s in Applied Linguistics at University of California at Los Angeles. After traveling the world, David visited Bangalore a few years ago, where he met and married a Bangalore girl, Surya Sajnani. David now lives in Florida with Surya and their son Siddhartha (2 1/2). They are now expecting their second child.
Jim met his wife Rosa Partida in San Diego. Rosa Pinto was born in Mexico, but has lived in San Diego since she was very young. Rosa and Jim have 2 children. Their son, Christopher, is a talented artist and computer digital animation expert; he works for several major digital movie companies such as ILM (recent movies he worked on, Master & Commander, Peter Pan) and Escape Entertainment (who made the Matrix movies) – (recent movie Chris worked on – Catwoman). Chris now lives in San Francisco. Their daughter, Rosalie (named after her grandmother) is now 25, graduated with honors from Berkeley and then completed her Master’s degree at the Peter Stark School of TV and Film Production at USC in Los Angeles. She is now working in Hollywood, in TV and Film Production.
When he was still a boy, Jim Pinto visited Puttur many times, to visit his grandmother and he has many fond memories of those times. And he sometimes visited Mangalore, to stay with aunts and cousins in Belthangady. Later, he used to visit India every few years when his mother and father were still alive. He has been to India twice in the past 10 years, and enjoyed his visits. He usually goes to Bangalore to visit his brother and sisters, and then Mumbai, and Pune – where his sister and brother and other relatives live.
His message to Mangalorean.com readers:
“You can do anything you really want to do. Pursue your goals with passion and persistence.”
Mangalorean.com wishes Mr. Jim Pinto all the very best in his future endeavors!
You can e-mail Jim Pinto at: jim@jimpinto.com
Or visit his website at: www.jimpinto.com