Meet lesser-known Indian billionaire, invested early in Rs 13874600 crore company, net worth climbed to…

Despite facing tragedy early in life, this Indian billionaire grew up to script a phenomenal success story with co-stars like American tech tycoons Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. He is a visionary who saw a jackpot coming years before most people, when it was just a tiny business set up in a small garage.

Kavitark Ram Shriram faced a setback when he was just three years old and his father passed away. It brought financial difficulties to the family where his admission to school became a challenge. He rose above them to eventually earn a BS degree from Madras University. The first turning point came with the opportunity to study MBA in the United States. He then went on to build a successful executive career where he worked closely with Jeff Bezos during the initial phase of his e-commerce giant. Shriram-led online firm Junglee was acquired by Amazon for $185 million in 1998.

The second turning point came in 2000 when he decided to start looking for potential investments in ideas taking baby steps. He founded his venture capital firm named Sherpalo Ventures. Shriram backed Google early on with a half a million dollar investment. Today, the company now known as Alphabet is one of the richest in the world and boasts a market cap of  over Rs 138 lakh crore.

While Shriram has offloaded most of his stake, he is still on the board of Alphabet. His net worth is Rs 21,637 crore. His other major investments are in companies like Paperless Post, Gusto and InMobi. The billionaire and his wife donated $61 million to Stanford University in 2014.