Three Indians among Forbes Web billionaires

NEW YORK, USA: Three Indians, including Indiabulls’ Sameer Gehlaut and Party Gaming founder Anurag Dikshit, have been named among the 34 innovators in the ‘web billionaires’ list by the US magazine Forbes. 

The Internet boom has put 34 innovators on our list of world’s richest, comprising a total networth of $109.7 billion, the Forbes report said. 

The list includes Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page with the highest networth of $18.7 billion and $ 18.6 billion, respectively. Gehlaut, who also features in the list had started an online brokerage firm Indiabulls with two college friends in 1999. He still heads the company and is its largest shareholder. The group has moved into real estate business and is further looking to expand into the power sector, the magazine stated. 

Kavitark Ram Shriram, is another India-born innovator on the list, with a networth of $1.8 billion. He owns the Indian job site Naukri.com. In 2007, Shriram had sold online classifieds site Stumbleupon.com to Ebay and at present backs Indian and US tech outfits — 24/7 Customer, Frontline Wireless and Zazzle.com.

Online gambling firm, Party Gaming’s Anurag Dikshit is the third Indian on the list, with a networth of $1.6 billion. 

The magazine described Dikshit as “ a developmental engineer turned online gambling mogul.” 

Dikshit holds a degree in computer science and engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. 

He had joined Party Gaming a year after its founder, American Ruth Parasol, had launched Starluck Casino on the Internet in 1997. 

Dikshit wrote company’s betting software, which enables gamblers around the world to play one another in poker.