The "Indian Mafia" muscles onto the Web.

Vikas Bhushan, a 33-year-old doctor, had a business idea: to Webcast medical school lectures and classes worldwide on the Internet. However, he and his three other physician cofounders weren't sure if a medical degree would be enough to get them started. Then Mr. Bhushan joined the Los Angeles chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE); six months later, Medschool.com was officially established. Mr. Bhushan, Medschool.com_s CEO, still belongs to TIE, attends the monthly meetings held at the Sheraton Hotel in Cerritos, and plans to pitch his site to influential VCs who attend TIE's annual conference in May. He_s following in the footsteps of other Indian entrepreneurs who have founded successful companies -- such as Hotmail, Cybermedia, Junglee (which have all been acquired for millions), and Exodus Communications (Nasdaq: EXDS) -- with the help of TIE. "We members joke about how we belong to the Indian Mafia," Mr. Bhushan says. TIE now has more than a thousand members nationwide, many of whom have played a powerful role in shaping today_s technology. According to an official at the University of California at Berkeley, nearly 9 percent of the 4,000-plus high-tech companies started in Silicon Valley since 1995 were Indian-led; many of those were funded with help from TIE. Its 200 senior, or "charter," members, including Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sycamore Networks (Nasdaq: SCMR) Chairman Desh Deshpande, and Exodus Communications cofounder K.B. Chandrasekhar, have personally invested more than $100 million in young companies and paved the way for $400 million in venture capital investments. The close-knit group was founded seven years ago by 20 of Silicon Valley_s top Indian-born entrepreneurs who had been invited back to their home country to talk about their successes. None of the group members knew each other before the trip, but according to Kanwal Rekhi, president of the Silicon Valley chapter, "we saw how we could put that to positive use by becoming mentors for younger people so they would not have to fight as hard as we did." The name IndUS was chosen to signify that its members are from both India and the United States. From Silicon Valley, TIE has spread nationwide with seven chapters in Boston, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Seattle and Vancouver will get theirs in February and TIE has also spread overseas to London and three cities in India. TIE is open to anyone with roots or interest in the Indus region (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka and more recently also including the wider region of Southeast Asia). The charter members --entrepreneurs, corporate execs, and senior professionals who've made it big -- are welcomed by invitation only and pay $1,000 in annual dues and commit time to mentor general members.