Anand Deshpande, who currently serves as the Chairman and Managing Director of a renowned software company with a global reach, has a net worth of more than Rs 10,600 crore ($1.3 billion).
Anand Deshpande had a choice to make after completing his Masters in the United States: either remain in a comfortable job or return to India to start something on his own. When it came time to apply for a work visa or green card, he decided to quit his job at the leading technology company Hewlett Packard (HP) after only six months.
In 1990, Anand Deshpande founded Persistent Systems, a software company based in Pune, India. He invested his savings and borrowed money from friends and family to start the venture. What began with an initial investment of Rs 2 lakh has now grown into a company with a market capitalization of over Rs 36,000 crore. Today, as the Chairman and Managing Director of this leading software firm with a global presence, Deshpande’s net worth exceeds Rs 10,600 crore ($1.3 billion).
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Anand, born in Akola, Maharashtra, was raised in a BHEL township in Bhopal where his father worked as an engineer. Though he cleared the NDA entrance exam after school, he chose to pursue a degree at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur after cracking the IIT-JEE entrance exam. He then went on to pursue further studies at Indiana University in the US.
Deshpande’s company, Persistent Systems, raised its first funding of $1 million from Intel Capital in 2000, a decade after its inception. In 2005, the company received another funding of $20 million from Norwest Venture Partners and Gabriel Venture Partners. In 2010, Deshpande took the company public through a successful IPO.
An alumnus of Indiana University, Anand Deshpande holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He is also a philanthropist and has been involved in charitable work from an early age. He co-founded the DeAsra Foundation with his family, which supports young entrepreneurs and helps them scale up their businesses to achieve their dreams.