India's High-Tech Barons Crash Billionaires' Club
Sunday October 24 3:25 AM ET
By Narayanan Madhavan
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Another Indian technology baron has vaulted to the top of the country's league table of billionaires, flying high on a global boom in high-tech stocks.
Gururaj ``Desh' Deshpande, founder of Sycamore Networks Inc (Nasdaq:SCMR - news), is now worth over $3.27 billion after his firm listed on the U.S.-run Nasdaq exchange Friday in a blockbuster debut.
Sycamore ended the day worth $14.4 billion, its shares having soared nearly five-fold after its $284.1 million initial public offer -- the fourth most successful float ever on Nasdaq.
Deshpande, 48, and company chairman, is just one of a growing band of Indian-born entrepreneurs who have turned a passion for computers and a sprinkling of cash into massive fortunes.
In a country where poverty is still a huge problem, India's booming high-tech industry has become an embarrassment of riches rivalling Silicon Valley.
Forbes magazine this year named Azim Premji, chairman of Bangalore-based Wipro Ltd, as the richest Indian, estimating his worth at more than $2.8 billion.
Shiv Nadar, founder of India's HCL Technologies, part of the HCL group, followed well behind with $1.2 billion.
N.R. Narayana Murthy, chairman of another Bangalore-based firm, Infosys Technologies Ltd (Nasdaq:INFY - news), also has deep pockets, although he is not on the Forbes list yet.
An Indian business daily in August put the wealth of Murthy and associates at over 47.4 billion rupees ($1.1 billion).
Murthy is related by marriage to Deshpande, who was educated at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The two are married to sisters.
Internet's Indian Moneybags
More than a few Indian billionaires have made their high-tech fortunes in the United States and now call America home.
Forbes estimates the wealthiest of these are Rajendra Singh, a board member of Teligent Inc, Sanjiv Sidhu, founder of i2 Technologies Inc, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems Inc (Nasdaq:SUNW - news).
Forbes estimated the worth of Singh and Sidhu at $1.1 billion each and Khosla's at $1.0 billion.
Naveen Jain, chairman and chief executive of Internet hot stock InfoSpace.com, stands on the threshold of the billionaires' club with an individual worth estimated at $930 million.
But membership to this exclusive club is often at the whim of share-market investors, especially for high-tech capitalists whose fortunes are largely in the form of unrealized paper gains.
Their net worth relies more on the expectation of future profits than earnings already delivered. Their wealth has soared in tandem with share prices, and the technology barons themselves sometimes describe their new-found wealth as ``funny money.'
There is little doubt, however, that enormous profits have been made and realised.
An investor who bought Sycamore shares at $38 in the primary market and sold them at their peak on debut in the secondary market would have made a huge gross profit of $232 per share.
At the close Friday, the shares fetched 184-3/4, up 386 percent on their debut.
Founded only last year, Massachusetts-based Sycamore has all the technology buzzwords in the right places: data networking, the Internet and now, the latest, optical networking.
dailynews.yahoo.com
|
