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Two IITians among 400 richest Americans

Washington, September 22
Two IIT alumni have made it to the Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans, topped for the 18th year in a row by Bill Gates with Warren Buffett in second spot.

According to the US business magazine, Bharat Desai with $1.35 billion gets the 329th spot with Vinod Khosla two notches below at 331st place with $1.3 billion.

Kenya born Syntel co-founder Desai (58), an IIT-Bombay graduate, founded the outsourcing outfit in 1980, took the company public in 1997 and now has some 16,200 employees. Shares have jumped 20 per cent over the past year. Fellow IITian Vinod Khosla (56), according to Forbes "is the rare Silicon Valley venture capitalist able to generate profits from a clean tech portfolio”.

The Indian-born engineer, who made his early fortune as co-founder of Sun Microsystems, recently vowed to give away half his fortune to charity when he signed Bill Gates' and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge last April. While Microsoft co-founder Gates' fortune swelled by $5 billion in a year to $59 billion, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman and CEO Buffett's fortune decreased by $6 billion -- the largest dollar-amount loss by anyone on the Forbes 400 this year, to $39 billion, the magazine said. — IANS

Forbes 400