Meet this successful bunch of Indian-Americans behind some of the most popular startups and technology firms in the US

Baiju Bhatt along with his friend at Stanford University, Vladimir Tenev, founded the stock trading app Robinhood, that’s all the rage in the US. Bhatt was born to Indian immigrants from Gujarat in Virginia. Bhatt’s net worth is a billion dollars, according to Forbes.

Founded in 2013, Robinhood has over 13 million users and is valued at over $40 billion. The company has also confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US. Robinhood was in the eye of a storm, as it was at the centre of the GameStop short squeeze saga in the US markets.

The audio-led social media app has made news around the world as more and more tech leaders and CEOs jumped on to the platform to hold discussions and conversations. More recently, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been the latest guests in Clubhouse talk show. And behind it all, is the Indian-American Rohan Seth.

Seth, a Stanford alumnus, along with Paul Davison founded Clubhouse in 2020 and it’s already a billion dollar company.

Seth grew up in New Delhi and worked for Google until 2012. He then launched a startup Memry Labs, which ‘explored new behaviours to record and remember more memories’, as per Seth’s LinkedIn profile. The startup was acquired by Opendoor, an online real estate platform, in 2017.

Apoorva Mehta is the founder of the US-based grocery startup Instacart, which has grown multiple folds during the COVID-19 pandemic. As per reports, the company, in its latest financing round, has raised funds at a valuation of $39 billion.

Shashank Samant joined digital engineering firm GlobalLogic in 2008 and is the chief executive officer. The company made news when it got bought by Japanese conglomerate Hitachi for nearly $10 billion, earlier this week.

GlobalLogic, founded in 2000, expects to have garnered a revenue of $1.2 billion by the end of fiscal year 2021. By FY28, the company aims to have an adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation) of over $1 billion.

The company also has over 20,000 employees across 14 countries.

The 62-year old Jay Chaudhry is the owner of the cybersecurity firm Zscaler. Chaudhry and his family own 45% of the Nasdaq-listed ZScaler, which is worth $28 billion.

Chaudhry grew up in a Himalayan village called Panoh, in the Una district of Himachal Pradesh. During his childhood, with no access to electricity, Chaudhry studied under trees. “I used to walk nearly 4 kilometres everyday to attend my high school at Dhusara, the neighbouring village,” he said in an interview to The Tribune many years ago.

Today, Chaudhry, an American citizen, is one of the world’s richest with an estimated net worth of $13 billion. He founded Zscaler in 2008 and went for initial public offering in 2018.

Indian-American Deepak Sekar founded Chowbotics in 2014 and was recently acquired by DoorDash. The startup makes food-preparing robots. The 38-year old Indian Institute of Technology grad has moved on from the founder’s role, in 2019, and is currently on the Board of Directors at the company and runs an artificial intelligence (AI) edtech firm Prof Jim.