Meet Jay Chaudhry, the 10th richest Indian: From studying under a tree to earning Rs 153 crore per day

Jay Chaudhry was born in a tiny village called Panoh in Himachal Pradesh to parents who were small farmers. His village lacked basic amenities like electricity and drinking water. Instead of inside the house, he found it easier to study outside under a tree.

From those humble beginnings, Chaudhary, the Founder-CEO of California-based IT security firm Zscaler, recently became the newest entrant into the list of 10 richest Indians in the world. As per IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich list 2021, Chaudhry’s “Daily Wealth Creation Velocity” in the last year stood at a mind-boggling Rs 153 crore.

Before Zscaler, Chaudhary founded a number of successful companies like AirDefense (acquired by Motorola), CipherTrust (merged with Secure Computing), CoreHarbor (acquired by USi/AT&T) and SecureIT (acquired by VeriSign in 1998). But before going on to become a successful serial entrepreneur, Chaudhry worked in multi-national corporations like IBM, Unisys and IQ software for 25 years. In 1996, Chaudhry and his wife Jyoti, both left their well-paying jobs to put their savings into founding a successful startup, thus starting his journey to the top.

His rise came on the back of stellar growth in the wake of the increased demand of cybersecurity among US institutions after a series of major ransomware attacks. Chaudhry saw an 85% increase in his wealth, which today stands at over Rs 1,60,000 crore ($15.7 billion). His wealth comes from his 42% stake in Zscaler, the New York Stock Exchange listed company with a market cap of Rs 2,81,000 crore, that he founded back in 2007.

On Zscaler’s success which propelled him to the 10^th richest Indian in the world, Chaudhry had once stated in an interview, “When I started Zscaler, at that time the market wasn’t ready for it. But I could see the market was coming. Starting it early on gave me time to build a great architecture that scales. And as the market got hot, we were there way ahead of anybody else.”

Chaudhry is an alumnus of IIT-BHU (Varanasi) from where he pursued Bachelor of Technology in Electronics Engineering before going on to pursue three masters degrees in the US after leaving for the country in 1980s. He did an MBA in Marketing, MS in Computer Engineering and MS in Industrial Engineering, all from the University of Cincinnati. He then pursued his Executive Management Program from the prestigious Harvard Business School. The 62-year-old currently resides in Nevada after relocating from the Bay Area in the US.