This Indian-Origin Man “Never Had Money” As Kid But That Helped Him Become A Billionaire. Read His Story

Jay Chaudhry, the 65-year-old founder and CEO of cloud security giant Zscaler, has an estimated net worth of more than $11 billion. He says he has never really cared about money. But ironically, this mindset helped him become a billionaire. “Personally, I don’t have a lot of attachment to money. I never had money in my early childhood, so there was never a notion that I must buy A and B and C,” Mr Chaudhry, who grew up in a small village in rural India, told CNBC Make It. 

The 65-year-old said that this mindset helped him become an entrepreneur in the first place. He revealed that in 1997, he and his wife Jyoti quit their jobs and sank their life savings – roughly $500,000 – into a cybersecurity startup called SecureIT. They saw an opportunity to get a foothold in the budding industry during the early internet boom. They were undeterred by the prospect of losing their savings because their “pretty simple” lifestyle didn’t involve a lot of spending, Mr Chaudhry said. The couple was also confident that they could land new jobs if their startup failed. 

“That’s probably my family influence. I’m not sure exactly what did it, but that upbringing never changed. Some people get money [and] need to buy five houses and boats and planes and all of this kind of stuff. That’s a headache to me,” the 65-year-old continued. 

The couple worked together to get the companies off the ground. While Mr Chaudhry served as the chief executive officer, his wife oversaw the finance, systems and human resources department in the early stages, he revealed. 

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Then, less than two years after launching SecureIT, they sold it for roughly $70 million in stock. The couple used some of that money to bootstrap several more businesses and eventually put about $50 million into launching Zscaler in 2007, Mr Chaudhry said. The company went public in 2018 and is currently valued at roughly $29 billion, the outlet reported. 

According to the billionaire, his attitude towards wealth helped him make smarter, long-term business decisions. “I’ve seen in [Silicon] Valley, people raise a lot of money. Then they go and get very fancy buildings and mahogany desks and all that nonsense,” he said. “I think if you put in your own money, you deal with it very differently. It’s a good thing to do that,” he added. 

“No attachment [to money] is literally being able to make a bet and say: ‘Let’s spend [and] do this venture,'” Mr Chaudhry concluded.