Tech CEO Jay Chaudhry never had money as a child. Now, he's worth over $11 billion

Jay Chaudhry is the founder-CEO of California-based cloud security giant Zscaler. (Image credit: Zscaler)

As a child growing up in a farming village in rural India, Jay Chaudhry never had money. Now, however, the 65-year-old founder and CEO of California-based cloud security giant Zscaler, has an estimated net worth of more than $11 billion.

“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,” Chaudhry told CNBC Make It, adding that it was this mindset that helped him become an entrepreneur in the first place. Chaudhry and his wife Jyoti had in 1997 quit their jobs and used all of their life savings of about Rs 4 crore into a cybersecurity startup called SecureIT.

The couple was undaunted by the possibility of losing their money because they lived a “pretty simple” and did not spend a lot, Chaudhry said. They were also confident of landing new jobs if their startup failed.

“That’s probably my family influence,” the billionaire told the publication. “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.”

Within two years of launching SecureIT, Chaudhry and his wife sold it for roughly $70 million (about Rs 589 crore) in stock. They used some of that money to bootstrap several more businesses and eventually put about $50 million (about Rs 420 crore) into launching Zscaler in 2007. In 2018, the company went public and is currently estimated to be worth about $29 billion.