Four Indian-Americans in Forbes 400 rich list

Four Indian-Americans, including Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, are among Forbes’ 400 Richest People in America, a list topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. 

Apart from Khosla, those who made the cut include outsourcing firm Syntel’s founder Bharat Desai, venture capitalist Kavitark Ram Shriram and software king Romesh Wadhwani. 

While Khosla occupies the 308th spot in the list with fortunes worth $1.3 billion, Desai ranks 252 with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Shriram occupies the 288th position with assets worth $1.45 billion and Wadhwani is on the 290th spot with a total valuation of $1.4 billion. 

The list is topped by Gates, which has retained his position as the richest man in America, with a net worth of $54 billion, for the 17th year in a row. 

Desai earned his engineering degree from IIT Mumbai and moved to the US after landing a programming job for Tata Consultancy Services in 1976. He founded outsourcing outfit Syntel in 1980. 

Shriram is a founding board member of Google and one of the first investors in the company. 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. 

Wadhwani, 62, is founder, Chairman & CEO of Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm investing in software and software services company. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, He moved to the US in 1969. 

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982. The 55-year-old is an IIT alumnus.