A relatively unknown Indian bio-tech entrepreneur, 37-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy has thrown his hat into the 2024 US Presidential election. On Tuesday, he announced he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
So, who is Vivek Ramaswamy?
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ramaswamy is a first-generation Indian American whose parents immigrated to the US from Palakkad, Kerala. His father, Ganapathy worked at General Electric as an engineer while his mother Geetha, from Thrippunithura Kochi, was a geriatric psychiatrist in Cincinnatti. Ramaswamy’s wife Apoorva Tewari, is an assistant professor and surgeon at the Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Centre. Ramaswamy’s brother Shankar is also a biotechnologist and co-founder of Kriya Therepeutics, a bio-tech firm.
Ramaswamy graduated in biology from Harvard College and earned a law degree from Yale in 2013. His personal fortune is said to be in the region of $500 million. His wealth is said to be built largely around Roivant Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company he founded in 2014 after working as an investment partner.
On Wednesday (Feb 22), a day after he announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination, Ramaswamy sold 4 million shares in biotech firm Roivant Sciences at a price of $7.95 per share for a total of $32 million, netting him an estimated $24.2 million in after-tax proceeds.
He has authored the best-selling 2021 book Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, and has become a regular on the cable TV circuit.
He calls his presidential bid as ‘an unapologetic pursuit of excellence’, a slogan that may catch the imagination of the general public.
“We’ve celebrated our ‘diversity’ so much that we forgot all the ways we’re really the same as Americans, bound by ideals that united a divided, headstrong group of people 250 years ago,” he wrote in a tweet when he announced his campaign. “I believe deep in my bones those ideals still exist. I’m running for President to revive them.”
According to a report in Deccan Herald, “Ramaswamy is comfortable in speaking Tamil as the Brahmin families in the locality generally communicate in Tamil in homes. He can understand Malayalam, but can’t speak.
