At the age of 25, he left his family in Delhi, India, to study for an MS degree in Physics (Solid State) in the US, arriving with just $8 in his pocket.
He found it to be an exciting field because it applied the knowledge he had learned as an engineer to his developing interests in understanding the physics behind the behaviour of semiconductor devices.
At the University of Cincinnati, when NCR needed help, Dham was the student in his class who had worked the longest in semi-conductors.
He later moved to the micro-processor division, where he honed his skills for leading the Pentium project by working on two earlier generations of micro-processors—Intel's 386 and 486—in various capacities.
By the time he started the Pentium project, many established and new players, including the AIM consortium (led by Apple, IBM, and Motorola) and the ACE (Advanced Computing Environment) consortium formed in 1991 and led by Compaq, Microsoft, DEC, and MIPS Technologies, and a consortium by Sun Microsystems (which comprised Sun, Fujitsu, Philips, Tatung, and Amdahl) using superior RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) had all begun aggressively working on their big idea for the PC industry, and these projects seriously threatened Intel's dominance in this segment.
Dham believes that Intel's ability to 'focus and execute' while maintaining full compatibility of the application with its previous-generation microprocessors was the key reason for its success over dozens of these big competitors.
He then launched an incubator, NewPath Ventures, where he co-founded companies with the objective of using India's emerging talent in chip design for R&D.
He is currently the managing director and founder of Indo-US Venture Partners,[24] an early-stage India-focused fund that he founded after NewPath.
Dham has, over the years, been a board member and technical advisor to dozens of private and public companies worldwide.
Dham said he was a keen observer of how Andy Grove built strategy and organisation for Intel's success in the microprocessor business.
The design engineering team at NexGen proved itself to be very capable, but the company did not have a chip that was bus-compatible with the Pentium, an important functionality that was needed to fit in the PC industry dominated by Intel.
Dham, with his wide-ranging experience, did changes in NexGen's strategy, knowing that NexGen had to license intellectual property (IP) that would piggyback on infrastructure that had already been created by the rest of the PC industry and needed access to manufacturing capabilities and advanced technology by partnering with established players to build its chips competitively with Intel's.
After spending a year at AMD, post-acquisition of NexGen, Dham joined another startup in April 1998—Silicon Spice as CEO and president.
With demand for communications-related chips then growing at 20% per annum, Dham and Silicon Spice's three MIT-graduate co-founders wanted a piece of the pie.
Silicon Spice raised more than $34 million in VC funding from New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
Dham learned from dealing with several customers that there was an emerging need for developing chips that could effectively transfer voice over the Internet.
Dham re-directed the company to build this new chip to support VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), among the first in the world at the time.
"[25] "One of the biggest lessons I learnt was that it always helps to start defining your product with very early involvement with customers, "said Dham.
IUVP's focus has been on investing in Indian companies across sectors including mobile technology, knowledge process outsourcing, internet, education and healthcare.
Dham was profiled at the Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas in 2007, organised by the Ministry of Overseas Affairs of the government of India, a high recognition for accomplished Indians including Amar Bose, Indra Nooyi, Vinod Khosla, Arun Sarin and Lakshmi Mittal.
NRI Institute has a nearly 30-year history of recognising Pravasi (non-resident) such as Sam Pitroda, Chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission; Lord Swaraj Paul, British Parliamentarian and Founder of Caparo Group; and Baron Karan Bilimoria of Cobra Beer.
[35][26] On 13 November 2014, Dham was honoured with the 'Lifetime Accomplishments Award' by VC Taskforce, a Silicon Valley–based organisation boasting 6000 members dedicated to promoting innovation through the Venture Community.