Rags-to-riches stories of people starting their lives from almost nothing in terms of money, and becoming billionaires and international celebrities on the strength of their innovative ideas, business acumen, leadership qualities etc. have always fascinated me. They are the nouveau riche who acquired considerable wealth within his or her generation.

Once nouveau riche were looked down upon by the traditionally rich, but in the 20th century, there is a shift in attitude towards them, for example, Ronald Reagan, a self-made man who was surrounded by other self-made men and became the US President. In the sphere of technology, industries and business, accomplished men like Dhirubhai Ambani, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, David Filo and Jerry Yang, are some examples of nouveau riche.

Dhirubhai Ambani (1932 - 2002), was an Indian rags-to-riches genius who founded Reliance Industries in 1977. By 2007 his combined fortune, with sons Anil and Mukesh, was $60 billion, making the Ambanis the richest family in the world. Born as the second son of a school teacher, when Dhirubhai Ambani was 16, he moved to Aden, Yemen and worked for a salary of Rs.300 a month (about $6 in today’s rates), and later was promoted to manage his employer’s filling station. He eventually returned to India and started business in partnership his cousin to import polyester yarn and export spices, a humble beginning that later made Ambani family the worlds’ richest.

In 1996 Google was born as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when they were both PhD students at Stanford University. And now Google has grown to become the world’s largest internet search company, running millions of servers worldwide, which process hundreds of millions of search requests each day. Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin are ranked 26th on the 2009 Forbes list of the world’s billionaires.

More nouveau riche can be found in Silicon Valley like Jerry Yang, the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! created the company in April 1994 with David Filo as a website consisting of a directory of other websites. Later Yahoo became one of the topmost search engines. In 2006, Filo was estimated to be worth $2.9 billion, ranking him the 240th richest person in the world.