Romesh T. Wadhwani Net Worth 2026

Romesh Tekchand Wadhwani (born 1947) is an Indian-American billionaire,^[2] businessman and head of investment firm SAIGroup.^[3] He is the former chairman and CEO of Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm for software, Internet and technology services companies, including SurveyMonkey^[4] and Onclusive.^[5] He established the Wadhwani Foundation for economic development in emerging economies, with an initial focus on India.

Romesh T. Wadhwani was born in a Sindhi Hindu family in Karachi, Pakistan, 10 days after the partition of India on 15 August 1947.^[1][6] His family moved to India shorty thereafter. He contracted polio at age 2 and had difficulty getting admission to school.^[7] He received a bachelor's degree from the IIT Bombay, and master's and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.^[8]

For a decade, Wadhwani was the founder, chairman, and CEO of two companies, one (American Robot Corporation) specializing in software and solutions for computer-integrated manufacturing and the other (Compu-Guard Corporation) in technology-enabled energy management.^[9]

Wadhwani was then the founder, chairman, and CEO of Aspect Development, Inc., from its startup in 1991 to its acquisition in 1999 by i2 Technologies for $9.3 billion in stock^[10].^[8]

Together with his brother, Sunil Wadhwani, he has founded Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Mumbai to develop artificial intelligence solutions for public good.^[11]

Wadhwani has invested $1 billion in predictive and generative AI SaaS company SymphonyAI.^[12]

Wadhwani is on the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, both in Washington, D.C.^[13]

He established the Wadhwani Foundation for economic development in emerging economies in 2000,^[1] with an initial focus on India. Initiatives in India include the National Entrepreneurship Network, which has established programs to enable growth-centric entrepreneurship at over 500 universities and colleges; a skills college network to help train and place large numbers of young adults in vocational jobs; an opportunities network for the disabled; and a research initiative in biosciences and biotechnology to help create jobs through innovation.^[1] The Foundation has launched a US-India policy initiative, with Rick Inderfurth, previously Assistant Secretary of State, as the Wadhwani Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy think tank in Washington, D.C., and Hemant Singh, former Indian Ambassador to Japan, as the head of the Wadhwani program at ICRIER, a major policy institute in Delhi. Wadhwani won the India Abroad Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2013.

In 2012, Wadhwani inaugurated a new research centre at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore, named after his late mother, Shanta Wadhwani.^[14]

He is married to Kathleen "Kathy" Wadhwani,^[14][15] and they live in Palo Alto, California.^[8]

They have one daughter, Melina, who married Patrick Carey in 2011.^[16][17]

Wadhwani was awarded an honorary doctorate by IIT Bombay in 2018.^[18] He was awarded the Padma Shri for Trade & Industry, the fourth highest civilian honour of India, in 2020.