Indians can be successful CEOs, says richest Indian-American entrepreneur

He is the richest Indian-American, with a net worth of $16.3 billion, but few have heard of him in India.

Jay Chaudhry, known as a serial entrepreneur, ranked in Forbes magazine’s list of 400 wealthiest Americans in 2021 released last month. He is one of the seven Indian-Americans on the list, ranking 45th. The next richest Indian-American is Vinod Khosla, ranking at 92 with a net worth of $8.6 billion.

Born in Himachal Pradesh, Chaudhry left India in 1980 and moved to the US to pursue a graduate degree. He started Zscaler in 2008, which went public a decade later. He and his family have a 42 per cent stake in the Nasdaq-listed company.

Chaudhry told an Indian newspaper that more than a third of Fortune 500 companies depend on Zscaler for protection.

He and his team pioneered a disruptive way of cloud security for distributed and mobile enterprises.

“Zscaler has been for internet security almost like Elon Musk of Tesla Inc has been for the automobile industry,” he said.

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The entrepreneur pointed out that 25 years ago Indians in the US were seen only as good engineers who could write software.

But now “there are many more successful companies in Silicon Valley with Indian founders and the perception that they can’t be successful CEOs has completely changed,” he said.

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