Many successful businesswomen have worked in top companies before starting their entrepreneurship journey. Some even started their businesses with a small amount from their apartments. After a few years, they became billionaires. One such person is Neerja Sethi, an Indian-origin woman who co-founded IT consulting and outsourcing firm Syntel. Before this, the 69-year-old used to work in IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). She is now a billionaire with a real-time net worth of USD 1 billion (Rs 8330 crore), as per Forbes.
Neerja started her business with her husband Bharat Desai in 1980 in their apartment in Troy, Michigan. They began it with just a USD 2000 investment. This is around Rs 1.6 lakh today. The duo met in the US while working for TCS.
However, years later in 2018, French IT firm Atos SE bought Syntel for USD 3.4 billion. Neerja got an estimated USD 510 million for her stake. She had served as an executive at Syntel since 1980. However, she did not join Atos after the acquisition.
Neerja resides in Fisher Island, Florida and has been on Forbes' America’s richest self-made women list several times including in 2023. The Indian-origin woman holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics and an MBA in operations research from Delhi University. She also has a master’s degree in computer science from Oakland University.
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