Seven Indians in Forbes' 400 richest Americans' list

The Indians are here and they have the Midas Touch!

As many as seven of them stormed into the Forbes magazine's annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, having first invaded the Silicon Valley not too long ago.

Sanjiv Sidhu, of i2 Technoliges, is the richest Indian now and ranks 24th amongst the richest Americans. Gururaj Deshpande of Sycamore Networks ranks 32nd on the list.

The others who feature in the Forbes list are Pradeep Sindhu of Juniper Networks, Naveen Jain of InfoSpace, Rajendra Singh of Teligent, Romesh T Wadhwani of i2 Technologies and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

These remarkable entrepreneurs are not only the essence of the best Indian minds, but also brilliant visionaries who are leading the world into the new information age.

Indians are growing economically at a pace unmatched by any other Asian group. And each year, they are becoming richer. Indians living in America now earn more than any other ethnic community in the United States and are positioned to exercise unprecedented political influence in the upcoming elections.

Ajay Shah of Smart Modular, Mukesh Patel also of Smart Modular, Ken Sharma, of i2 Technologies, Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail/Arzoo fame, Mukesh Chatter of Nexabit Networks … the list of super-wealthy Indians keeps growing…

Sanjiv Sidhu, 43, is the 24th richest American. He made $9.8 billion in software. He is a B2B billionaire. Originally from Hyderabad, where his father was a chemist, Sidhu obtained a master's degree in chemical engineering at Oklahoma State.

He thought up the idea for i2's supply-chain management software while working in Texas Instruments' artificial intelligence lab. He quit soon to start i2 Technologies in his Dallas apartment in 1988. He took the company public in 1996. Last year, i2 Technologies registered a phenomenal 994 per cent in its scrip value, boosted by investor passion for B2B companies.

In June 2000, he bought electronic commerce software maker Aspect Development for $9.3 billion. Sidhu says his company will save customers $50 billion in costs by 2005. He is an avid sailor and was a member of Indian national sailing team.

Gururaj 'Desh' Deshpande, 49, is the 32nd richest American. He is married to the sister of Infosys' celebrated founder-CEO N R Narayana Murthy's wife. He made $7.6 billion in communications through fibre optics. His company, Sycamore Networks, went public in October 1999. This move made him a billionaire overnight.

Pradeep Sindhu, 46, is the 104th richest American. He is worth $2.5 billion through his communications firm Juniper Networks. Indian-born Sindhu got a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, worked at Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center, and left in 1996 with $200,000 from venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins for plans to create high-speed Internet routers.

Naveen Jain, 41, ranks 121st in the richest Americans' list. He is worth $2.2 billion through Microsoft and his company InfoSpace. Raised in India, he immigrated to US in1982. He spent seven years at Microsoft only to quit in 1996. He founded InfoSpace with very little financing. InfoSpace is not making any money yet, but with its stock up 250 per cent in the past year, its shareholders are.

Rajendra Singh, 45, ranks 207th in the richest Americans list. He is worth $1.4 billion made through his company Teligent (formerly Telecom Ventures and Digital Service Corp).

He is from Rajasthan. He oversees a growing stable of telecom investments. With his wife, Neera, he devised software for new cellular telephone systems.

Romesh T Wadhwani, 52, is worth $1.3 billion through i2 Technologies. He ranks 218th amongst the wealthiest Americans. He founded a B2B software firm Aspect Development in 1991, maker of software that helps clients track internal spending, inventory and buying habits. He sold the company to Sanjiv Sidhu's i2 Technologies for $9.3 billion, the largest merger in software history. Now he is i2 Technologies' vice-chairman.

Vinod Khosla, 45, is worth $1 billion and ranks 274th in the super-wealthy list of Americans. He also founded Sun Microsystems. He then began a second career at a Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins, where he specialised in funding telecom, networking giants: Juniper, Cerent, Redback Networks, Corvis. He was raised in New Delhi.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates retained the title of world's richest person despite losing $22 billion as shares in his software company dropped.

Gates' hold at the top of the list also has become shaky due to his high level of charitable giving this year. Recent contributions to the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation have increased the charity's funding to $22 billion.

Gates, 43, who was worth $85 billion a year ago, suddenly has company at the top from Oracle software founder Larry Ellison, a 56-year-old from Atherton, California. Ellison's wealth increased a phenomenal $45 billion this year to $58 billion on Oracle's 360 per cent stock rise.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, 47, ranked third on the list with $36 billion. Allen has gradually sold off his Microsoft stake to build an empire of telecommunications and multimedia companies.

Investor Warren Buffett, 70, head of the Berkshire Hathaway Fund, was fourth with $28 billion.

Gordon Moore, the 71-year-old founder of computer chipmaker Intel, was fifth on the list with $26 billion.

Moore and Buffett have both made the Forbes richest list since 1982.

Forbes said there are 298 billionaires in the United States and 47 new people entered the 400 richest club, which took a minimum of $725 million to enter.

Philip F Anschutz of Qwest Communications; and Steven Anthony Ballmer of Microsoft; are followed by Alice L Walton, Helen R Walton, Jim C Walton, John T Walton, and S Robson Walton of Wal-Mart Stores in the list.

Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Sumner M Redstone of Viacom, John Werner Kluge of Metromedia and media magnate Keith Rupert Murdoch too are amongst the richest Americans.

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