INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
He was physically there, but seemed pensive, elsewhere
His thoughts were back at his makeshift office at Harvard, where a tiny team working out of his dorm room in Kirkland House was busy writing
A code that set up a company worth tens of billions of dollars today - one that keeps us all hooked on to our phones - Facebook.Mark
Zuckerberg glanced up to see Divya Narendra looking him in the eye, sitting two chairs to his right on the other side of the table
He suddenly found everyone staring at him, waiting for a response perhaps
There was a deafening silence in the conference room
Mark Zuckerberg was being sued for "stealing" the very idea of Facebook.The people who were suing him were his seniors from Harvard - Divya
Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss and his brother Tyler Winklevoss.In December 2002, more than a year before Facebook came into existence, Divya
Narendra had thought of a "social network to connect fellow Harvard students." He discussed this idea with his friends Cameron and Tyler,
who saw potential in it and came on board immediately
They decided to call it Harvard Connection (now ConnectU).Divya Narendra then approached his friend and Harvard senior Sanjay Mavinkurve,
who became the first person to write a program for the social network
But Sanjay soon graduated, got a job with Google and couldn't complete the project
Divya Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers approached another friend Victor Gao, who in turn suggested going to a young lad named Mark
Zuckerberg, who had recently finished first year
Mr Gao had done some of the coding himself.In November 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg heard about the social network, he immediately said yes
By this time a large amount of coding had already been done, like front-end pages, the registration system, a database, back-end coding, and
a way users could connect with each other, which was termed "the handshake"
Things seemed to be back on track for Divya Narendra and his friends.Divya Narendra shared details of the project and confidential codes
Mr Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers then went to meet Mark at Kirkland House
"Mark seemed enthusiastic and excited about Harvard Connection," they said
Divya Narendra explained the highly confidential nature of the project to Mark Zuckerberg and also shared his thoughts of expanding beyond
Harvard - to other universities
During this meeting, Mark Zuckerberg allegedly entered into an oral contract with Divya Narendra and the Winklevosses and became a partner
in HarvardConnection.Mark Zuckerberg was then given private server locations and the password for the unfinished HarvardConnection website
Mr Zuckerberg allegedly even chose to be compensated in the form of sweat equity, instead of a payment for the service.In the days and weeks
to come however, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly started avoiding calls and emails for further meetings about the project
He sent multiple text messages and emails to Divya Narendra putting things off for later
He kept saying he was "too busy" or was "swamped with work"
After a few weeks, Divya Narendra along with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss went over to his dorm room to meet and check if things were okay
They claimed they saw a big white board in his room with "multiple lines of code under the heading Harvard Connection".On January 8, 2004,
Mr Zuckerberg emailed Divya Narendra to say he was "completely swamped with work that week" but had "made some key changes which seemed to
be working great" on his computer
He told Mr Narendra he could discuss the site starting the following Tuesday - January 13, 2004.On January 11, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg
registered the domain name thefacebook.com, which eventually became Facebook
On February 4, less than a month after that, he launched the website - which, like Harvard Connection, would require a harvard.edu email
address to be able to register.Divya Narendra first found out about thefacebook on February 6, after there was a buzz around campus of "a
new social networking website to connect fellow Harvard students".After an unsuccessful meeting with the dean of Harvard University, Divya
Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers finally sued Mark Zuckerberg for "stealing their idea"
The lawsuit, which accused Mark Zuckerberg of "intellectual property theft", said he "illegally used source code intended for the website he
was hired to create."The case went on for four long years, during which Facebook expanded aggressively, and established presence not just in
universities across America, but across six continents.Mark Zuckerberg, who said he hadn't used a single code meant for Harvard Connection
in Facebook, finally had to agree to an out of court settlement
He paid Divya Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers $65 million
Divya Narendra was also made part owner of Facebook with a small percentage of the companies shares as part of the settlement.Divya Narendra
SumZero, he says, has been inspired by the need for a simple, centralised, and searchable platform in which professional investors working
