she founded Syntel with her husband
Some of the most successful US Indian businesswomen are shattering the glass ceiling.
They are running their companies successfully and making changes for the better.
They are also changing the power dynamics within the boardroom.
What makes their success even more fascinating is that many of them are entirely self-made.
Here are five of the most successful US Indian women.
Jayshree Ullal
Jayshree Ullal is the president and CEO of Arista Networks.
When it comes to successful US Indian businesswomen, she is the top name.
Jayshree also has the distinction of being the only US Indian woman to make it to Forbes’ Billionaire Club.
Arista Networks is a computer networking firm that is based in Santa Clara, California.
Before being named CEO in 2008, she worked at Cisco for 15 years.
Jayshree was born in London and raised in Delhi. She came to the United States at the age of 16 as a student.
She graduated in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University and completed her Masters’ in engineering management from Santa Clara University.
Her big break came when Cisco Systems acquired Crescendo Communications and she was made senior vice president of Data Centre and Switching.
In 1999, Jayshree became the first woman to receive the Entrepreneurial and Leadership award in Silicon Valley.
Neerja Sethi
Neerja Sethi’s success story began when she founded Syntel with her husband Bharat Desai in 1980.
Syntel is an IT consulting and outsourcing firm.
It became a success story in 2018 when French IT firm Atos SE purchased Syntel for $3.4 billion.
Neerja received approximately $510 million for her stake.
Neerja has been working as a Syntel executive since 1980. After the acquisition, she did not join Atos.
She and her husband met while working for Tata Consulting Services.
They tried to create a similar model and started their venture with a $2,000 investment.
Neha Narkhede
Neha Narkhede co-founded Confluent, a streaming data technology company that is valued at $4.5 billion.
She initially worked at Oracle as a principal software engineer. She then joined LinkedIn as the lead of streams infrastructure.
In 2011, Neha and her colleagues, Jun Rao and Jay Kreps, created Apache Kafka.
In 2014, she co-founded Confluent, a startup based in Palo Alto, California.
She along with her team at Confluent raised $125 million in 2019, bringing its total funding to $206 million in 2019.
In April 2020, the company raised $250 million bringing its total funding to $456 million.
Neha, who was born in Pune, studied engineering at the University of Pune and completed her Masters’ in technology at Georgia Tech.
Rashmi Sinha
Rashmi Sinha is one of the most successful US Indian businesswomen, having co-founded SlideShare in 2008.
In 2012, LinkedIn acquired the company and Rashmi continued to run her company as a unit of LinkedIn after the purchase.
She worked closely with the LinkedIn leadership team to keep SlideShare aligned with the overall strategy of LinkedIn.
Rashmi previously founded Uzanto, a user experience consulting company that she ran from 2003 to 2006.
She has a degree in cognitive science and a PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology from Brown University, Rhode Island.
Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan
Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan founded Drawbridge in 2010 and it is an anonymised cross-device identity company building technology that changes the way brands connect with people.
After graduating from Stanford University, Kamakshi worked as the lead engineer of AdMob, which was purchased by Google in 2009.
She then embarked on her entrepreneurial journey.
Drawbridge has raised funding from VC firms like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Northgate Capital, and Mitsui & Co.
Kamakshi previously said: “Running a business is just a collection of millions of tiny risks, and everything you will ever be proud of, you will see that it was achieved as a result of a risk gone right.”
These are just five of the most successful and wealthiest self-made US Indian women.
They took advantage of any opportunities that came their way and solidified their names in the world of business.
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