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Meet the man who left his high-paying US job and built a 60,000 CR company in India. 1. Anand Deshpande had been an ace student. He cleared the entrance exams for NDA and MANIT but opted to study computer science engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He made everyone proud as the boy from Akola in Maharashtra was doing his PhD in computer science at Indiana University in the USA. 🙌 2. Nine months before his graduation, Anand got an offer from the computer giant HP to work in their research labs. At 28, Anand Deshpande was living an engineer's Silicon Valley dream life, but he had a question - Settle in the US forever or move back to India? 🤔 3. Anand chose the latter and left his high-paying job after six months. He wanted to build a company around databases and called up his father from the US to incorporate a company in Pune on his behalf. On 30th March 1990, Persistent was born. 🚀 4. Anand started but needed an office. After eight months of struggle, he became the first person to get a 350 sq ft rented space in Pune from the government's STPI programme. With Rs 2 lakh as his tax refund and Rs 3.6 lakh in loans from friends and family, he started with one computer and six employees. And the first client came. ✅ 5. France-based object database firm 02 Technologies wanted to develop their query process and gave Persistent Rs 7.5 lakh against it. As he clocked sales of Rs 13 lakhs by 1992, a big client knocked on his door that changed his journey. 👇 6. Microsoft approached Persistent for a small project, and Anand quickly migrated assembly code from 16-bit to 32-bit for a FORTRAN compiler. With its success, he also worked with top clients like HP and Illustra. And then 1994 came, and things changed again. 🤞 7. The Internet came to India, and IT firms started opening up. Anand moved away from databases to technology services and software development for these companies. It crossed 10 CR revenue by 2000 and raised 4.3 CR from Intel at a valuation of 121 CR. 💰 8. As it changed its name to Persistent Systems, it went IPO in the next three years. On 6th April 2010, Persistent Systems debuted on the stock market after its 168 CR IPO oversubscribed by 93.60 times. It touched revenues of 612.38 CR at a profit of 115 CR. 📉 9. Post-listing, it developed products for digital transformation and acquired fourteen companies in content, mobile and cloud services by 2019. Persistent Systems had grown 6% persistently to a revenue of 3565.8 CR with 1000 clients annually across 17 countries. 🌍 10. Today, Persistent Systems is a leader in Digital Engineering and Enterprise Modernization, having 23,850 employees in 21 countries. Growing at 14.5% yearly, Persistent clocks revenue of 9821.59 CR and is valued at 60,590 CR. 💪 ➡️ Anand Deshpande is worth 21,580 CR but uses his wealth to support micro-entrepreneurs through the deAsra Foundation, which he started at 50. 🙏