Forbes recently rolled out its list of the top 400 of America’s richest people. Ranking alongside Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Walmart’s Luke Walton was this Indian-origin entrepreneur. One of the ten youngest members, Baiju Bhatt, is the only Indian-origin founder on the Forbes list.
Currently worth $6 billion, 40-year-old Bhatt stands among several American billionaires. He built a stock-trading platform, Robinhood, in 2013, which made him the youngest billionaire among other notable names.
Who is Baiju Bhatt?
Baiju Bhatt or Baiju Prafulkumar Bhatt is a Gujarati by birth. Born to immigrant parents, the family moved to Alabama when his father went on to pursue his PhD. He grew up in a small town in Poquoson, Virginia, and went on to study physics at Stanford. He completed his Master’s in Mathematics in 2008.
Founder and CEO of Aetherflux, a space-based solar energy company, he co-founded Robinhood with Vlad Tenev. The firm aims to democratise finance and offer commission-free stock trading. Currently a board member, he only recently transitioned to Aetherflux in 2024. Until last year, he was the Co-CEO of Robinhood and its Creative Officer of the stock-trading platform till 2024.
When Bhatt stepped down from his leadership at Robinhood, the stock had increased by 400%, finding deep pockets in cryptocurrency, new offerings such as IRAs and high-yield savings accounts, and a record $3 billion in revenue for 2024.
Financial troubles to billionaire
With a strong value for education, Bhatt revealed, in an interview with Shawn Ryan, that his family had gone through a lot of financial hardships. His father was diagnosed with kidney failure and had to go through expensive medical treatments. Bhatt was merely five then. He revealed that they could not afford trips back to India, with his last visit, he recalled, was in 1997. After nearly three decades, he became the only Indian-origin to be named among the youngest billionaires by Forbes.