According to Forbes' 2017 Billionaires List, Tamil Nadu's Shiv Nadar is the richest Tamil in the world.
Ranking at #102 out of 2,043 billionaires, the 71-year-old's net worth is estimated at $12.8B. How did he get so wealthy?
Born in 1945, in Moolaipozhi Village (Tamil Nadu), he went on to receive a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore. After a short time at an engineering firm, he started his own tech venture, HCL, as a startup with his partners.
"Indian IT pioneer Shiv Nadar cofounded HCL as a garage startup in 1976 to make microprocessors. Today, he chairs HCL Technologies, a $6.6 billion (revenues) company that is among the country's top software services providers. Like its rivals, HCL has been on acquisition streak. Last year, HCL agreed to acquire Mumbai software firm Geometric, controlled by the billionaire Godrej family, in a share swap valued at $190 million. More recently, it bought Butler America Aerospace, a defence and aerospace services firm, for $85 million. His eponymous Nadar University is partnering with Dell for technology projects in areas such as cloud computing and big data."
Shiv Nadar is married with a daughter, the current CEO of HCL (Roshni Nadar, pictured below), and lives in Delhi, India.
Shiv wasn't the only Tamil to be featured in Forbes' list this year. Malaysian Tamil entrepreneur, Ananda Krishnan, whom we previously featured as the richest Tamil in the world in 2014, also makes the list at #219. Read his story below.
http://tamilculture.com/malaysian-tamil-billionaire-ananda-krishnan-makes-forbes-richest-list/
Interested in seeing more content like this on TC? Please consider supporting our writers and editors with a small monetary contribution here.Sources: Wikipedia. Image: Livemint.com & Forbes.com.