100 Richest Self-Made Women: 4 Indian-origin biz leaders in Forbes’ list

New York: Four Indian-origin women, including Jayshree Ullal and Indra Nooyi, have been named by Forbes among America’s 100 richest self-made women, with a combined net worth of a whopping USD 4.06 billion.

President and CEO of Arista Networks, a computer networking firm; Jayshree Ullal, co-founder of IT consulting and outsourcing firm Synte; Neerja Sethi, co-founder and former chief technology officer (CTO) of cloud company Confluent; Neha Narkhede and PepsiCo's former chair and CEO Indra Nooyi made it to Forbes list of 'America's Richest Self-Made Women'.

"Bolstered in part by a rebound in the stock market, they are cumulatively worth a record USD 124 billion, up nearly 12 per cent from a year ago," Forbes said last month at the release of its ninth annual list. Ullal, ranked 15th on the list, has a net worth of USD 2.4 billion. She has been president and CEO of the publicly-traded Arista Networks since 2008 and owns about 2.4 per cent of its stock. Arista recorded revenue of nearly USD 4.4 billion in 2022. She is also on the board of directors of Snowflake, a cloud computing company that went public in September 2020. The 62-year-old studied electrical engineering at San Francisco State University and engineering management at Santa Clara University.

Sethi, 68, ranked 25th on the list, has a net worth of USD 990 million. Syntel, co-founded in 1980 by Sethi and her husband Bharat Desai, was bought by French IT firm Atos SE for USD 3.4 billion in October 2018.

Sethi got an estimated USD 510 million for her stakew. She did her Bachelor of Arts/Science and Master of Business Administration from Delhi University and Master of Science from Oakland University.

Narkhede, 38, is ranked 50th on the list with a net worth of USD 520 million. As a LinkedIn software engineer, she helped develop the open-source messaging system Apache Kafka to handle the networking site's massive influx of data. In 2014, she and two LinkedIn colleagues left to found Confluent, which helps organisations process large amounts of data on Apache Kafka.

The USD 586 million (2022 revenues) company went public in June 2021 at a USD 9.1 billion valuation; Narkhede owns around 6 per cent, Forbes said. In March 2023, Narkhede announced her new company, fraud detection firm Oscilar, where she is co-founder and CEO. Nooyi, the former chair and CEO of PepsiCo, retired in 2019 after 24 years with the company, half of which she spent in the top job. The 67-year-old has a net worth of USD 350 million and is ranked 77th on the list.

As CEO, the 67-year-old thwarted a bid to break up PepsiCo, nearly doubled sales and introduced healthier products and environmentally friendly practices. Her fortune stems from stock she was granted while working at PepsiCo. Nooyi joined the board of Amazon in 2019 and grew up in India. She received an MBA from Yale before becoming one of corporate America's few female CEOs in 2006.

For the 6th time in a row, Daine Hendricks, the co-founder of ABC Supply, topped the list. ABC Supply is one of the largest wholesale distributors of roofing, siding and windows in the US. Hendricks, 76, has a net worth of USD 15 billion, Forbes said.

To compile net worths, Forbes valued individual assets including stakes in public companies using stock prices from May 12, 2023, and valued private companies by consulting with outside experts and conservatively comparing them with public companies.