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Jay Chaudhry, a 66-year-old Indian-American entrepreneur, has been named the richest Indian-origin person in the US, with a net worth of $17.9 billion, according to Forbes. He ranks 8th on the magazine’s 2025 list of richest immigrant billionaires in America.

Chaudhry grew up in a small Himalayan village in India, where basic amenities like electricity and running water only arrived when he was in the eighth and tenth grades. In 1980, he took his first flight ever  from India to the United States to attend graduate school at the University of Cincinnati.

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Jay is the founder and CEO of Zscaler, a cloud-based cybersecurity firm he started in 2008. The company went public in 2018, and he, along with his family, continues to hold around 40 per cent of the firm. Based in Nevada now, Chaudhry has played a key role in shaping the cybersecurity landscape.

Before Zscaler, he launched four other companies SecureIT, CoreHarbor, CipherTrust and AirDefense all of which were eventually acquired. In 1996, he and his wife Jyoti quit their jobs and used their savings to launch SecureIT, his first venture, which was later bought by VeriSign.

Also Read:Tata Motors’ Shubhranshu Singh, Infosys’ Sumit Virmani among world’s top CMOs in Forbes 2025 list 

An alumnus of IIT BHU, Varanasi, Jay holds an MBA in Marketing and dual master’s degrees in Computer Engineering and Industrial Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He also completed the Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School. Before becoming a serial entrepreneur, he worked at IBM, NCR, and Unisys.

Recognitions won by Chaudhry over the years include Ernst & Young's "Entrepreneur of the Year", SC Magazine's "Market Entrepreneur", and a place on Goldman Sachs' "100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs" list.

Jay Chaudhry's story is one of a boy who lived without the basic utilities and went on to rank among the richest and most influential in the world of technology in America. This illustrates the power that vision, perseverance, and risk-taking carry.

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