From Studying Under A Tree In India, Jay Chaudhry Is Worth $35 Billion Today

62-year old Jay Chaudhry, owner of cybersecurity company Zscaler has now become one of the richest men in the world after shares of his company skyrocketed in the pandemic year.

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Today he has climbed 577 spots in the Hurun Global Rich list of 2021, while also becoming one of the top 10 richest people from India. Today he's on the 762 ranking on the aforementioned list.

Jay Chaudhry is from Himachal Pradesh

Jay Chaudhry was born in the village of Panoh, in the Una district of Himachal Pradesh where having access to running water was a concern. He revealed in an interview that during his childhood, the village didn¡¯t have access to electricity, so he¡¯d study sitting under a tree almost every day. His father passed away when he was young, so whatever he is today, he was made by his mother and her hard work.

He also revealed in an interview how he¡¯d often walk nearly 4 kilometres to his school in the neighbouring village of Dhusara.

He eventually went to study at the Indian Institute of Technology at BHU in Varanasi, attaining his graduate degree while further completing his MBA from the University Of Cincinnati. Later he permanently moved to the US, in Saratoga, California.

Jay Chaudhry's recent billions

Jay Chaudhry owns a 45 percent stake in Zscaler -- a public company listed on Nasdaq that today is worth $28 billion. The Hurun List highlights that Chaudhry saw his net worth skyrocket by a whopping 271 percent last year, touching $13 billion.

Zscaler is known to provide security as a service to leading tech companies around the world including stalwarts like Microsoft, Siemens, CrowdStrike, AWS, VMWare and others. And the work/stay at home during the pandemic has really contributed to raising the company¡¯s valuation. It has over 5,000 clients with a quarter from the Global 2000, while also having over 6,000 employees.

Zscaler¡¯s upward trend was seen even till the second quarter of 2021 with its revenues at $157 million -- 10 percent higher sequentially and 55 percent more year on year.

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Jay Chaudhry: Serial entrepreneur

Before ZScaler, Jay Chaudhry has formed and sold several companies, including CoreHarbour to American telecom giant, AT&T, Secure IT to security company VeriSign, CipherTrust to Secure Computing (for $274 million) and AirDefense to smartphone maker Motorola in 2008.