Forbes8217; rich list admits 2 more Indians

The seven, in order of appearance are:

Position 8212; Name 8212; Value 24. Sanjiv Sidhu 8212; 9.8 billion 32. Gururaj Deshpande 8212; 7.6 billion 104. Pradeep Sindhu 8212; 2.6 billion 121. Naveen Jain 8212; 2.2 billion 207. Rajendra Singh 8212; 1.4 billion 218. Romesh Wadhwani 8212; 1.3 billion 274. Vinod Khosla 8212; 1 billion

All seven are from the new economy sectors.

While Sanjiv Sidhu, Naveen Jain, Rajendra Singh, and Vinod Khosla figured in last year8217;s list, Deshpande, Sindhu, and Wadhwani are new to the list.

Among those who dropped out of the last Forbes 400 is Amar Bose of Bose speakers fame.

Topping the list of rich Indian-Americans is Sanjiv Sidhu, a low-key 42-year-old software tycoon who founded the Dallas-based supply chain management leader I-2.

Sidhu, originally from Hyderabad, was in 223rd place with 1.1 billion last year. This year he has jumped nearly 200 places to 24th as his net worth has soared to 9.8 billion on the strength of I2 phenomenal performance on the stock market where it has multiplied by nearly 1000 per cent.

Gururaj quot;Deshquot; Deshpande and Pradeep Sindhu co-founded the firms Sycamore Networks and Juniper Networks respectively. Both companies are in the Internet infrastructure areas and both have performed brilliantly on the stock market, enabling them to crash into the list of the American super-rich.

Infospace8217;s Naveen Jain has moved from 280th place last year to 121st this year, his wealth more than doubling from 930 million to 2.2 billion.

Fifth on the list is Rajendra Singh from the Washington area, who has moved up from 223rd place last year to 207th this year.

Romesh Wadhwani, who founded the firm Aspect Development and recently joined hands with I28217;s Sidhu, has presumably been bumped up because of his holding in I2.

The only one shown moving down the list is Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who is a general partner in the firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers. Khosla was 243rd on the Forbes 400 list last year and has slipped to 274th this year. His wealth is given as stationary at 1 billion.

But Khosla8217;s placing suggests imprecision and randomness of the Forbes 400. A legendary VC described by the Wall Street Journal

as the 8220;hottest hand in Silicon Valley8221; right now, Khosla has backed several sizzling firms in the Internet infrastructure area this year, including Corvis, Siara, and Redback.

Similar8217;s Jain8217;s 2.2 billion can at best be a stab at defining his wealth. The Infospace stock has plunged from 138 at its peak earlier this year to 30 this week, so the money Forbes posted against his name could vary wildly. The same holds good for Sidhu, Sindhu, Deshpande, and especially Singh, whose telecom firm Teligent has been beaten from 100 a share to about 10 as of today.

But what is remarkable is all seven Indians are self-made and newly moneyed by the new economy.

All of them came to the US in the 1970-1980 period. Four of them 8212; Deshpande, Sindhu, Wadhwani and Khosla 8212; are from IITs.

Another significant aspect is most of them worked in high-profile American firms at one time or the other. Sidhu worked at Texas Instruments before founding I2. Deshpande came from Motorola, Sindhu came from Xerox Parc, and Naveen Jain was with Microsoft.

At 52, Wadhwani is the oldest among them and founded the software firm Aspect Development in 1991. Earlier this year, he sold Aspect to I28217;s Sanjiv Sidhu for 9.3 billion in what was described as the biggest merger in the history of the software industry.

Both Wadhwani and Juniper8217;s Sindhu have PhDs from Carnegie Mellon, while Deshpande has a doctorate from Canada8217;s Queen8217;s University.

Sidhu, a former Indian national sailing champion, came to the US in the early 80s and studied chemical engineering at the Oklahoma State University. He came up with the revolutionary ideas for supply-chain management software in his Dallas apartment in 1988, leading to the founding of I2.

Khosla, who studied at Stanford after graduating from IIT Delhi, founded Sun Microsystems when he was only 27 and has gone on to become one of Silicon Valley8217;s most celebrated Venture Capitalists. Both Khosla and Desh Deshpande were invitees last week to President Clinton8217;s dinner banquet for Prime Minister Vajpayee.