[tps_header]Five Indian-Americans have been listed by “Forbes Magazine.” This is a list of 400 billionaires, topped by Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft.[/tps_header]
[tps_title]1)Bharat Desai[/tps_title]
Silicon Valley venture capitalist and founder of IT major Syntel.
Rank: 239 | Net worth: $2 billion
Desai, 59, is the chairman and co-founder of Syntel, which he started in 1980 with his wife while earning his MBA from the University of Michigan. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Desai stepped down as chief executive of the firm in 2009. Desai is also a board member of several educational institutions, including the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
[tps_title]2) Romesh Wadhwani[/tps_title]
Rank: 250 | Net worth: $1.9 billion
Wadhwani, 65, is the founder and chairman of Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm that invests in software and software services companies.
Prior to Symphony, Wadhwani was the founder and former chairman and CEO of Aspect Development, Inc., from its startup in 1991 to its acquisition in 2000 by i2 Technologies for $9.3 billion. Wadhwani grew Aspect Development to become an industry leader in software, analytic and content solutions for supply chain management and optimization.
Prior to Aspect, for ten years each, Wadhwani was founder, chairman and CEO of two companies, one specializing in software and solutions for computer-integrated manufacturing and the other in technology-enabled energy management solutions.
[tps_title]3) Kavitark Ram Shriram[/tps_footer]
Rank: 298 | Net worth: $1.6 billion
Shriram, 55, is a Google board member and shareholder. He also has stakes in online outsourcer 24/7 Customer and website picker StumbleUpon. He was one of the first people to write a check to Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998.
He is a founding board member of Google and (24/7). Shriram is also an investor in a global mobile ad network,InMobi, Search bid management tool Campanja and previously mKhoj.
Shriram serves on the boards of StumbleUpon, Zazzle and Paperless Post. As of September 2007, Shriram owned 1.7 million shares of Google.
[tps_title]4) Manoj Bhargava[/tps_title]
Rank: 311 | Net worth: $1.5 billion
Bhargava, 59, is the founder and CEO of the popular energy drink brand “5-Hour Energy.” He is a Princeton University drop out who “chose one of the roads less traveled to the American Dream.”
His businesses include Living Essentials (maker of 5-Hour Energy), Senterra Water (desalination and water purification), ETC Capital (an investment company), Oakland Energy & Water Ventures (an investment company), Stage 2 Innovation (products for fuel efficiency that invests in Michigan tech), MicroDose Life Sciences (medical devices) and U.S. Rail (railroad and freight terminal operations).
[tps_title]5) Vinod Khosla[/tps_title]
Rank: 328 | Net Worth: $1.4 billion
Khosla, 57, is a partner at Khosla Ventures. The Stanford and IIT alumnus “isn’t afraid to fail,”and has staked a big claim in clean tech—including on some companies he refers to as “science experiments.”
He also invested in an Indian microfinance company, SKS Microfinance, which lends small loans to poor women in rural India. Khosla is also one of the founders of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, and has guest-edited a special issue of The Economic Times(ET), a leading business newspaper in India.
Khosla was featured on Dateline NBC, where he discussed the practicality of ethanol as a gasoline substitute. He is known to have invested heavily in ethanol companies, in hopes of widespread adoption.
