Onkar grew up in the small village of Bamnauli in western Uttar Pradesh, about 35 miles north of New Delhi. His family was in farming, but rather than work in that field he became a chemist and worked for the government of India before moving to United States.

His family had discouraged his plans to go abroad, but Tomer had a stroke of luck soon after he arrived in New York, he landed his first job in New Jersey in just two weeks. That was a good break for a starter for he a job near Newark manufacturing small batches of chemicals and pharmaceuticals that paid $10,000 a year. He also signed up to work on his Ph.D. at Rutgers. Tomer later got a better job at Carter-Wallace, and finally finished his Ph.D. He then joined Pennwalt, a pharmaceutical company in Rochester, N.Y.

Like many other Indians who came to the United States at that time, however, he has done just that. Today Tomer, 54, a soft-spoken man with a deliberate manner, is the president of Chromak Research in Bound Brook, N.J., a research, testing and consulting firm

Chromak Research does contract research and testing for New Jersey's pharmaceutical companies. A significant part of its business, however, also comes from training people - especially young immigrants from India, Pakistan, China and Eastern Europe - in using equipment and research techniques that can help them get skilled technical jobs.

Onkar married Elizabeth, a German woman who worked as a typist at a publishing company. The couple had children, and bought a small house in Watchung,

Tomer saw his opportunity in making products known as packed columns for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). These products, based on a relatively new technology, are used for testing samples in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.