Five Indian-Americans in Forbes' 400 richest people list

Famous and prestigious US magazine Forbes in its US edition has listed five Indian Americans among 400 richest people of America.

Forbes magazine in its annual list of richest American has by Bharat Desai and family the 239th rank, Romesh T. Wadhwani No. 250th rank, Kavitark Ram Shriram 298th rank, Manoj Bhargava 311th rank and Vinod Khosla 328th rank.

This year too, Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates has been able to retain his top spot with $66 billion gaining more $7 billion from 2011.

Investor king and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett is stacked on 2nd spot with $46 billion (also up $7 billion from last year) while Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison with $41 billion secured 3rd spot. He became the biggest gainer worth $8 billion this year.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been pushed down in the rankings to the no. 36 spot with his estimated net worth falling by about $8 billion to $9.4 billion since Facebook went public in May.

Kenya-born Bharat Desai has $2-billion. He started as a programmer for Tata Consultancy Services, only to leave the company four years later to start Syntel with his wife.

Romesh T. Wadhwani with a net worth of $1.9 billion is a Founder and Chairman of Symphony Technology Group. Landing in the US with only a few dollars in his pocket, he developed business software firm Aspect Development. Today his portfolio includes more than 10 different enterprise software companies.

Kavitark Ram Shriram with a net worth of $1.6 billion is a Managing Partner of Sherpalo Ventures. He was one of the first people to write a check to Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998.

Manoj Bhargava has a net worth of $1.5 billion. His two-ounce caffeine and vitamin elixir, 5-Hour Energy, promises to keep users alert without crashing - and claims a 90 percent-plus market share in the energy shot sector.

Vinod Khosla is a Venture Capitalist who has a net worth of $1.4 billion. With a firm belief that the future lies in developing cleaner energy sources, the Khosla Ventures founder was a big backer of biofuel producers Kior and Gevo, both of which went public in 2011, according to Forbes.

--With IANS Inputs--