Three Indian IT guru made billions from the Web
Three Indians have been named among 34 innovators in Forbes magazine's 'Web Billionaires' list.
The trio comprise Kavitark Ram Shriram, an early investor in Google who is now on the advisory board of the jobsite naukri.com; Party Gaming founder Anurag Dikshit and Indiabulls' Sameer Gehlaut.
"The internet boom has put 34 innovators on our list of the world's richest, with a total net worth of $109.7 billion," the US business magazine said in its online report.
Heading the Web Billionaires list are Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page with a net worth of $18.7 billion and $18.6 billion respectively.
Shriram's net worth is $1.8 billion. He sold online classifieds site StumbleUpon.com to eBay in 2007 and currently backs Indian and US tech outfits - 24/7 Customer, Frontline Wireless and Zazzle.com. An early investor in Google, he has sold more than three million shares since its 2004 public offering.
The wealth of Party Gaming's Dikshit runs to $1.6 billion.
An IIT-Delhi graduate, he had joined Party Gaming a year after its founder, American Ruth Parasol, had launched Starluck Casino on the Internet in 1997. Dikshit wrote the company's betting software that enables gamblers around the world to play poker with one another.
However, the company's stock is down since its 2005 peak due to new US laws banning financial groups from facilitating online bets and Dikshit had left its board but still holds a big stake, Forbes said.
Sameer Gehlaut is the youngest self-made billionaire in India with a net worth of $1.2 billion. He had started an online brokerage firm Indiabulls with two college pals in 1999 and still heads the company and is its largest shareholder. The group has moved into real estate and wants to expand into the power sector, Forbes said.
The only woman among the 34 Web Billionaires is eBay's CEO Meg Whitman. Her net worth is $1.3 billion. She steered eBay through the Internet boom the company, which has moved beyond auctions, at present owns shopping.com and web-phone outfit Skype.
The wealth of eBay's founder and chairman Pierre Omidyar is much more than Whitman's -running to $7.7 billion. The French-born computer programmer had launched the online auction site in 1995. Today, more than 1 million people use it as a primary or secondary source of income. #
First published in Silicon India News, September 15, 2008
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