Four Indian-Americans among the wealthiest in U.S.
Thursday, 23 September 2010, 23:27 IST   |    18 Comments
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Four Indian-Americans among the wealthiest in U.S.
Bangalore: Showcasing the economic prosperity of the Indians in the U.S., four Indian-Americans have made it to the list of 400 wealthiest Americans. Forbes list of 400 Richest People in America is topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates with assets estimated at $54 billion. Syntel's founder Bharat Desai is the top Indian in the list ranked at 252th position with a net worth of $1.6 billion. He founded outsourcing outfit Syntel in 1980 with wife, Neerja Sethi, while earning his MBA from University of Michigan. Although he stepped down as Chief Executive Officer last year, Desai remains the chairman. Desai earned his engineering degree from IIT Mumbai and moved to the U.S. after landing a programming job for Tata Consultancy Services in 1976. The Florida resident launched a deep value hedge fund last year and recently established foundation supporting entrepreneurship and education. Venture capitalist Kavitark Ram Shriram occupies the 288th position with assets worth $1.45 billion. Shriram is the founding board member of Google and one of the first investors in the company. "Shriram was one of the first people to write a cheque to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998. He would advise them one day a week in their Menlo Park garage," Forbes said. The University of Madras alumnus is still a board member and large shareholder of the search giant. The California-resident is now running his own investment firm, Sherpalo Ventures, which has big stakes in online outsourcer 24/7 Customer. It has also invested recently in Inkling, which makes interactive textbooks for the iPad. The 53-year-old was elected Stanford University trustee last December. Romesh Wadhwani, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Symphony Technology Group is on the 290th spot in this year's list with a total valuation of $1.4 billion. Symphony Technology Group is a private equity firm investing in software and software services company. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Wadhwani moved to the United States in 1969 and earned a PhD in electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. The 62-year-old California resident founded software firm Aspect in 1991. "Wadhwani rode tech bubble onto The Forbes 400 in 1999 with $9.3 billion sale of Aspect Development software firm to i2 Technologies," Forbes said. Sun Microsystems Co-Founder Vinod Khosla occupies the 308th spot in the list with fortunes worth $1.3 billion. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982. "Khosla had a very good year. SKS, the Indian microfinance lender he backed in 2006, went public in August; his personal stake was worth a recent $90 million," Forbes observes. He joined Sun investor John Doerr at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1996 and started Khosla Ventures in 2004. His firm raised $1.1 billion in 2009, the most by a venture firm in 3 years. The other prominent members in the top 10 are Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison and Charles Koch. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, stands at the 35th rank and has witnessed a 245 percent increase in his wealth and his assets are estimated at $6.9 billion. The top 10 on the list gained $24.9 billion. The price of admission to the list is back up to $1 billion from 2009 when $950 million was enough to make it to the top 400.
Source: PTI
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