Indian-American co-founder of Confluent is the youngest self-made woman entrepreneur on the list
Indian-American Neha Narkhede, co-founder of Confluent, a streaming data technology company, now figures in the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 as the youngest self-made woman entrepreneur.
With an estimated wealth of Rs 47 billion ($580 million) Narkhede, 37, is ranked 336 in the IIFL Hurun India Rich List 2022 featuring people with a net worth of at least ₹10 billion ($123 million).
Read: 5 Indian Americans among America’s Richest Self-Made Women (July 5, 2022)
She was one of five Indian American women among 100 women featured in Forbes 2022 list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women released last July. She ranked 57 in Forbes list with a net worth of $490 million.
Narkhede, who grew up in Pune, India, studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech and today advises numerous technology startups. As a LinkedIn software engineer, she helped develop the open source messaging system Apache Kafka to handle the networking site’s huge influx of data.
In 2014, she and two LinkedIn colleagues Jun Rao and Jay Kreps left to found Confluent, which helps organizations process large amounts of data on Apache Kafka. The $388 million (revenues) company went public in June 2021 at a $9.1 billion valuation; she and her family own around 8%.
Read: Meet top three richest Indian American women (July 1, 2021)
In 2017, MIT Technology Review listed Narkhede as one of the innovators under 35. In 2018, she was listed as one of America’s and the world’s top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes. In October 2020, Narkhede was ranked 33 on the list of “America’s Self Made Women” by Forbes.
In total, 1,103 individuals made this year’s list, 96 more than last year, across 122 cities. A total of 735 entrepreneurs or 67% of the individuals on the list are self-made, up from 659 last year, and 367 five years ago.
The list was topped by Gautam Adani and family with a total wealth of ₹10.94 trillion ($134 billion), followed by Mukesh Ambani and family at ₹7.94 trillion ($98 billion).
With 283 individuals, Mumbai is home to the highest number of wealthy Indian individuals, followed by New Delhi and Bengaluru at 185 and 89, respectively. The list features has 100 entrants from 59 startups, including 65 founders of 37 unicorns.
Read: Who is Neha Narkhede, the youngest self-made woman in India rich list (September 22, 2022)
“India has the third-highest number of unicorns and gazelles (fast-growing enterprises with base revenues of $100,000 or more) in the world,” said Anas Rahman Junaid, managing director and chief researcher, Hurun India
“IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 has 100 entrants from 59 startups and, going forward, the share of startups is likely to increase manifold,” he said. “This has resulted in more young entrepreneurs entering the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List. For instance, the youngest ten years ago was 37, last year was 23 and this year is 19.”