27.04.2021
HOW A CRAZY IDEA TURNED A ROMANIAN INTO A BILLIONAIRE
Daniel Dinesh fought a tough battle with the US way of life after leaving his native Romania in 2001 to work for Microsoft. But later the difficulties became the basis for the accumulation of one of the greatest wealth in the world.
The software programmer returned home in 2005 to start the business now known as UiPath Inc. - a process automation platform that made its official stock market debut last week, raising $ 1.3 billion through an initial public offering in the United States, Bloomberg writes.
Dinesh, the company's chief executive, controls a stake in the business worth more than $ 6 billion. "For someone like me who arrives in the United States from Europe at the age of twenty, it was a great challenge to adapt to the United States, even if my professional experience at Microsoft was great," Dinesh, 49, said. during last year's Montgomery Summit. As a result, "I had a crazy idea to go back and start a company," he says.
UiPath, valued at $ 7 billion in 2019, currently has a market capitalization of about $ 30 billion after its shares reached a price of $ 56 per share, which is above market expectations.
This puts Dinesh among the 500 richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. "Starting a company in a small place without a market has its hidden advantages: it makes you think globally from day one," Dinesh said in a letter to the documents accompanying the stock exchange listing.
His company has been preparing to go public since early 2020. UiPath's software can perform a number of low-skilled tasks that businesses have outsourced to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines in the past.
Known as robotic process automation, the technology uses repetitive input to perform specific tasks. The software is used in hospitals and healthcare projects in the battle with COVID-19, according to the UiPath website.
Dinesh, who studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Bucharest, grew up in Romania under communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Initially, his company was called DeskOver, but in 2015 he changed his name to UiPath. The first steps in the business are managed by an apartment in the Romanian capital, and in 2017 the headquarters moved to New York.
Financing
UiPath is raising $ 750 million in funding in a round led by Alkeon Capital and Coatue, which raises the company's valuation to $ 35 billion, according to a February statement. Altimeter Capital Management, Dragoneer, IVP, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and funds advised by T. Rowe Price Associates are the other investors.
Dinesh owns all Class B shares, which corresponds to 35 votes to one vote for each Class A share. He continues to manage UiPath after the initial public offering, selling $ 75 million worth of shares.
"You have to become a public company at some point to allow your employees to get more liquidity by giving them options to buy shares," Dinesh said in an interview with Bloomberg last year. "We almost got there."
