The Rich Quartet

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: For the first time at least a billion dollars was required to get into the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. And four individuals with India connections made it to the list — Bharat Desai, Amar G Bose, Vinod Khosla and K Ram Shriram. The Financial Express takes a closer look at what made them make the cut

Bharat Desai, CEO, Syntel Inc

As far as hurdles go, every successful businessman has a different story to tell — even in the ‘land of opportunities’. For Bharat Desai, it was “getting accepted as a foreign professional. Because, business was typically run by people who have been in the US and run by an old-boy network which was difficult to break into.” He recalls that they couldn’t even pronounce his name. But 27 years later, the biggest acknowledgement — of being in the Forbes 400 — “is a great feeling to be among the top achievers in the business world in America which is the most thriving and competitive environment in the world,” says he. Today, Syntel has 500 employees in the US and about 10,000 in three centres in India — Mumbai, Pune and Chennai, which he set up in 1992.

But the trudge has been long. After graduating with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1975, Desai worked for TCS for about three years. Incidentally, that batch of graduates are reckoned to have the most successful entrepreneurs and millionaires than all the IIT batches.