Jay Chaudhry is the richest Indian in the United States of America, with a whopping net worth of 11 billion USD. He is the founder and CEO of Zscaler, one of the world's biggest cybersecurity firms. Jay Chaudhry founded Zscaler in 2008, and in just 16 years, he has taken his cloud security company to an unprecedented height. As per multiple reports, Zscaler has an estimated market value of 30 billion USD and has been generating 1.6 billion USD in annual revenue.
At the moment, Jay Chaudhry is in the 200th position on the Forbes List of the world's richest people. Before establishing Zscaler, Jay founded four tech companies, AirDefense, CipherTrust CoreHarbor, and SecureIT. All these companies were acquired by big giants of the cybersecurity sector, establishing Jay Chaudhry's status as one of the biggest and visionary entrepreneurs in the world. It's incredible how Jay Chaudhry has built an estimated wealth of 11 billion USD.
The reason behind this is the fact that Jay Chaudhry spent his childhood in a remote village in India, where there was no electricity or running water. That's why Jay's struggle story is one of the most talked-about entrepreneurial stories in technology. Well, people who are unaware of it, today, we are going to dive deep into the inspirational entrepreneurial journey of Jay Chaudhry, who is renowned as the 'richest Indian in the US'.
Indian-American billionaire and technology entrepreneur, Jay Chaudhry has American citizenship, but he was born on August 26, 1958, in a remote village named Panoh, which was in Punjab's Una district. It is now a part of Himachal Pradesh, but back in the '50s, there were only 800 people in the Panoh village. Jay Chaudhry was born into a small-scale farming family, as both his parents, Bhagat Chaudhry and Surjeet Chaudhry, were farmers. There was no electricity or running water facility in their village, and Jay used to walk 4 km daily like other kids attending high school in Dhusara village.
Due to the lack of electricity in his village in Punjab, Jay Chaudhry used to study under a tree. Despite all the difficulties, Jay Chaudhry was determined to study and improve his life with education. He achieved top honours in the pre-university exams at the state level. In the following years, he attained a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. Courtesy of his exceptional graduation scores, Tata Group helped him study abroad.
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Tata Group supported Jay Chaudhry's visit to the United States of America to pursue a master's degree in industrial engineering, marketing, and computer engineering from the prestigious University of Cincinnati. It was a massive turning point in Jay's life, who was studying under a tree and never even dared to imagine that he would study in one of America's top universities one day.
It was the late legendary business tycoon, JRD Tata, who deserves massive credit for introducing Jay Chaudhry to the world. It was his scholarship that changed Jay's life forever. After completing his education, Jay started his professional journey by working in companies like IBM, Unisys, IQ Software, and NCR Corporation.
Talking about Jay Chaudhry's personal life, he is married to Jyoti Chaudhry, who used to work as a systems analyst at BellSouth. The couple is blessed with three children, and the family resides in Reno, Nevada, United States. After working in their respective companies, Jay decided to establish his own internet security service company, SecureIT, and it was his wife, Jyoti, who quit her job and supported him in his dream. Not only this, Jyoti also invested all her life savings in founding their company, SecureIT. As per multiple reports, Jay and Jyoti's total life savings were around Rs. 4 crore back in 1996.
Finally, in 1996, Jay Chaudhry and Jyoti Chaudhry founded SecureIT. Within the first 18 months, they deployed firewalls in 50 per cent of the Fortune 500. Courtesy of SecureIT's incredible launch in the technology sector, it caught the attention of VeriSign. The tech giant contacted Jay and Jyoti to acquire SecureIT in an all-stock deal valued at nearly 70 million USD. The couple accepted the offer, and more than 70 employees of SecureIT became millionaires.
The reason behind it was the fact that VeriSign's stocks skyrocketed by more than 2,300 per cent and closed at a high of 253 USD per share. Even to this day, the story of how Jay cared about his employees and turned them into millionaires echoes in the corridors of the business world.
At the age of 66, Jay Chaudhry is the richest Indian in the US. He has been bestowed with numerous awards, including IIT Varanasi's Alumnus of the Year 2015, Alumnus of the Century in 2019, American India Foundation's Corporate Leadership Award 2022, and a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award program 2018.
What are your thoughts on Jay Chaudhry's journey from studying under a tree to building a net worth of 11 billion USD? Let us know.
Also Read: Who Is Vinod Khosla? Failed Soya Milk Venture, Second Richest Indian In USA, 7 Billion USD Net Worth
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