Indian-Americans are not just climbing the corporate ladder but also taking the elevator to the richie rich club, leaving behind many US corporate moguls including those from Starbucks, eBay and Motorola.
Google Inc. founder-director Kavitark Ram Shriram and Bose Corporation Chairman Amar Gopal Bose have both moved up the rankings in the list of Forbes' 400 Richest Americans.
Acoustics pioneer Bose and tech wizard Shriram have tied at the 242nd position in the list, ahead of Margaret C Whitman, the president and CEO of global online auction giant eBay Inc, Howard S Schultz, chairman of coffee retail giant Starbucks and Hilton Hotel chairman William Barron Hilton.
Bose and Shriram, who are now US citizens and worth $1.5 billion each, have also beaten Robert William Galvin of telecom giant Motorola, Robert Drayton McLane Jr of world's largest retail Wal-Mart and Roy Edward Disney of Walt Disney.
While Shriram had entered the list at 258 in 2005, for Bose (ranked 283 in 2005) it is the fifth year in a row on the Forbes 400 list. The net worth of Shriram and Bose have grown to $1.5 billion each from $1.3 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively, last year.
The feat achieved by Bose and Shriram comes close on the heels of four Indian expats -- Murli Kewalram Chanrai, Mustaq Ahmad, Sudhir Gupta and Kartar Singh Thakral -- making to the Singapore's Richest 40 list compiled by the same magazine.
Forbes said that billions of dollars accumulated by Shriram, a founding board member of online search giant Google, are either self-made or are from technology business.
Shriram, 50, was born and did schooling in Chennai, and currently lives in California.
He grabbed the limelight first with creation of shopping software solution Junglee, which he later sold to Amazon in 1998. He sold off more than half his Google shares since its high-profile IPO in 2004, but still owns 1.9 million shares worth $760 million.
His other investments include Zazzle (custom-designed T shirts, mugs, stamps), PodShow (online radio) and domestic call centre firm 24/7Customer.com.
Bose, 76, has earned most of his wealth from Bose Corporation, an acoustics company. He completed his education from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founded Bose Corp in 1964.
Bose started out by improving radio communications for NASA and the US military and today supplies to high-end automobiles like Porsche and Mercedes.
Forbes said that for the first time ever, everyone in Forbes 400 has a net worth of at least $1 billion. The collective net worth of the nation's wealthiest climbed $120 billion this year to $1.25 trillion.
Software czar Bill Gates tops the list with a fortune of $53 billion, followed by investment mogul Warren Buffett with a net worth of $46 billion.
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