Jay Choudhry, a 62 year old, was born in a small village in Una district of Himachal Pradesh. His village did not have electricity and also faced water scarcity. Jay lost his father at a young age and was brought up by his mother. He had to walk around 4 kms to reach his school at a neighbouring district. Jay used to study under a tree. Despite all these hurdles, he worked extremely hard and bagged a seat at the prestigious IIT-BHU in Varanasi. He then went to the US for further studies where he did his MBA from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Today, he is the owner of the cybersecurity firm Zscaler and has made his way to the top ten of India’s richest people. He is currently in the 9th position. Jay and his family own a 45% stake in Zscaler, a public limited company which is worth $28 billion. His net worth has skyrocketed by a whopping 271% and touches $13 billion. He founded the company in 2008 and it provides security as a service to leading tech companies around the world including Microsoft, Siemens, AWS etc. The company has over 5,000 clients and over 6,000 employees.
According to the Hurun Global Rich List, 2021, Tesla founder Elon Musk is at the top spot. There are a total of 208 Indian billionaires in the world, including 32 who live outside India. RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the richest Indian with a net worth of $83 billion.
