62-yr-old Romesh Wadhwani is an IIT-Bombay passout and moved to US in 1969 to pursue his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. He founded a software firm, Aspect in 1991 and sold it off during the dot-com exuberance.

He ranks 277 in the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans this year. His best investment so far has been buying market-research company Information Resources 2003; which was earlier on a moneyloser but now generates an operating profit margins of 10%. His net worth is $1,400 million.