We all dream of being rich and successful. We all want our faces to shine on the cover of Forbes and Time Magazines.
Building business empires from scratch is not a cake-walk. Years of struggle, multiple failures, and a ton of hard work is what it takes to climb that ladder. After all, not everyone is born with a silver spoon, some dare to dream and turn their wooden spoon into silver.
Let’s look into the lives of these billionaires who made fortunes from scratch and now sit at the highest pedestal reaping the fruits of years of hardwork and dedication.
1. NAME: NR Narayana Murthy
COMPANY: Infosys
NET WORTH: $1.92 billion
An IIT Kanpur alumnus, Narayana Murthy faced rejection by the Wipro founder Asim Premji who did not find him capable enough to handle their new computer division, and turned him down. It is inspiring how he took his rejection so well that he went ahead and founded Infosys in 1981.
With no financial support from his family- his father was a school teacher- Murthy borrowed money from his wife to launch the company Infosys which is now India’s second-largest software services exporter. A Padma Vibhushan awardee, Murthy was featured on Forbes’s 2015 list of richest Indians who also won awards like ‘Global Business Leader who made an impact’, ‘Greatest entrepreneur of our time’, ‘Most admired business leader’.
2. NAME: Dilip Shanghvi
COMPANY: Sun Pharmaceutical Industries
NET WORTH: $21.5 billion
When a son asked his father for the loan of Rs10,000 back in 1983, Shanghvi’s father didn’t know his investment will turn into a fortune of $21.5 billion some day. Dilip Shanghvi was a commerce graduate who made it to the list of richest Indians in 2015 by acquiring Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals and thus dethroning Reliance Industries supremo, Mukesh Ambani.
3. NAME: Shiv Nadar
COMPANY: HCL
NET WORTH: $12.9 billion
Shiv Nadar is the founder and chairman of HCL, India’s fourth-largest software services exporter. 50 years from when he first stepped into the big city, he now sits at the top of the HCL empire, with a personal net worth of $12.9 billion. Nadar is also one of the country’s leading philanthropists, spending $1 billion of his personal wealth on setting up universities and museums under Shiv Nadar Foundation.
4. NAME: Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal
COMPANY: Flipkart
NET WORTH: $10 billion
Coming from the middle class families of Chandigarh, Binny and Sachin are bonded by business, not by blood. The duo began their empire from an apartment in Bengaluru with just 4 lakh rupees in their coffers. They now proudly own 7 percent stake in their $10 billion baby which is now India’s biggest online retail company.
