Rank #2573
Bharat Desai
Net worth $1.6B
IT consulting · United States
- Born
- Nov 20, 1952
- Age
- 73
- Source
- IT consulting
- Residence
- Fisher Island, Florida
- Citizenship
- United States
- Marital status
- Married
- Children
- 2
- Education
- Bachelor of Arts/Science, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; Master of Business Administration, University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business
Net worth over time
Biography
- Bharat Desai founded IT consulting and outsourcing company Syntel with his wife Neerja Sethi from their apartment in Troy, Michigan in 1980.
- In 2018 French IT firm Atos SE acquired Syntel for $3.4 billion in cash.
- Atos sued Desai, accusing him of hiding liabilities ahead of the merger; the case was dismissed in 2023.
- In its first year, Syntel generated just $30,000 in sales; before it was acquired, annual revenue grew to more than $900 million.
- Desai, who was Syntel's chairman, was born in Kenya, raised in India and came to the U.S. in 1976 as a programmer for Tata.
- Desai and Sethi started the company with just $2,000.
- The couple met in the U.S. while working for pioneering IT firm, Tata Consultancy Services, the company they went on to emulate.