5 Indian-Americans on Forbes’ richest list

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NEW YORK (TIP): Vinod Khosla, Bharat Desai and three other Indian-Americans figured on the list of richest people in the US released by Forbes magazine. The magazine released the list on September 19.

Bill Gates continues to be the topper of the list comprising 400 billionaires.

Romesh Wadhwani, Kavitark Ram Shriram and Manoj Bhargava are the other Indian-Americans.

Khosla is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while Desai is founder of Syntel, an information technology major.

Khosla, who is 57, is a former IIT student. He also studied at Stanford University. “He is not afraid to fail. His firm also had a stake in social enterprise software company Yammer, which was purchased by Microsoft in July for USD 1.2 billion,” the magazine noted. Khosla’s rank is 328th and his net worth is USD 1.4 billion.

Desai with a net worth of USD 2 billion ranked 239 on the list. He launched Syntel 32 years ago along with his wife when he was still studying at the University of Michigan for his master’s in business administration. Desai–a former IIT, Bombay, student–resigned as the company CEO three years ago, but he continues to be its chairman of the board of directors.

Wadhwani, founder-chairman of Symphony Technology Group, has the rank of 250 on the list and he has a net worth of USD 1.9 billion. Wadhwani, who is 65, devised business software firm Aspect Development. He sold it 12 years ago, when there was tech boom, for USD 9.3 billion.

Shriram, a Google shareholder and its board member, holds the 298th rank and has net worth of USD 1.6 billion. He is a trustee at Stanford.

Bhargava, who is the founder-CEO of popular drink “5-hour Energy” has the 311 rank. His net worth is USD 1.5 billion. Bhargava, who is 59, is a Princeton University dropout and he “chose one of the roads less traveled to (realize) the American dream.” He lived like a sanyasi in the Himalayas before coming back to the US to launch a successful career in plastics.

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