Kavitark Ram Shriram (born 1956/57) is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is a founding board member and one of the first investors in

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. He was earlier employed by Amazon, working for Jeff Bezos. Shriram came to Amazon.com in August 1998, when the company acquired Junglee, an online comparison shopping firm of which Shriram was president. Before Junglee and Amazon, Shriram was a member of the

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

executive team, joining them in 1994, before they shipped products or posted revenue. According to '' Forbes'', as of September 2020, his net worth was $2.3 billion.

Early life

Shriram holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Loyola College, Chennai of the University of Madras.

Career

Shriram started his career with

Bell-Northern Research Bell-Northern Research (BNR) was a telecommunications research and development company established In 1971 when Bell Canada and Nortel, Northern Electric combined their R&D organizations. It was jointly owned by Bell Canada and Nortel, Northern ...

. In 1994, he became a vice president of

. Later, he also served as a president of Junglee. Shriram started Sherpalo, a venture capital firm that invests in promising new disruptive technologies, in January 2000. In 2020, Ram Shriram was selected for the Ellis Island medal of honor.

Philanthropy

Shriram and his wife have donated funds through education-focused Dhanam Foundation. They have funded Shriram Family Professorship in Science Education and the Shriram Family Fellowship in Science Education at

Stanford Graduate School of Education The Stanford Graduate School of Education (also known as Stanford GSE, or GSE) is one of the seven schools of Stanford University, and is one of the top education schools in the United States. It was founded in 1891 and offers master's and doc ...

. They have also funded $57 million to establish Shriram Center for Bioengineering & Chemical Engineering at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. In 2014, the Shriram along with his wife donated $61 million to the newly established Stanford School of Bioengineering.

Personal life

He is married to Vijay Shriram. They have two daughters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shriram, Ram Living people 1950s births American computer businesspeople Indian emigrants to the United States Stanford University trustees Amazon (company) people American billionaires American Hindus American philanthropists Tamil billionaires American corporate directors Businesspeople from Chennai University of Madras alumni American people of Indian descent Tamil entrepreneurs Indian Tamil people Directors of Alphabet Inc.