Is there any chance an Indian may run for the Republican nomination in the 2024 US presidential election? This debate was sparked by a tweet from US investor Bill Ackman. The tweet suggests that Vivek Ramaswamy, a prominent American entrepreneur, author and activist of Indian descent, will be among the contestants. Vivek is also the co-founder of Stive Asset Management and the brains behind the biotech startup Roivant Science. The 37-year-old political activist-millionaire, who calls himself a “Capitalist & Citizen” on social media, has recently been spotted involved in speeches and public appearances. To run for president, Vivek predicts how things will unfold, even if it appears unlikely then; he wants to emulate Donald Trump by entering the campaign with an entrepreneurial attitude, unorthodox ideas, and little expectations and building a solid following that will take him to office.
Vivek’s parents were immigrants from Kerala, India, and they settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, G. Ramaswamy, was an engineer in the General Electric Corporation; his mother, Geeta Ramaswamy, was a psychiatrist. Their families are from the Vadakkanchery neighbourhood in the Palakkad district in Kerala. After completing his education at Yale and Harvard, he has done his internship with Goldman Sachs. In 2007, he co-founded and served as president of Campus Venture Network. In 2009, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation bought this firm. From 2007 to 2014, he was a partner at the hedge fund QVT Financial and co-managed the company’s biotech portfolio.
Vivek started the biotech firm Roivant Sciences in 2014 and remained CEO until 2021. Later that year, he quit the position of CEO and published his first book “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam”.This book was an instant success, reaching #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. For the book, he wrote about his childhood memories during the vacations in his parent’s hometown in Kerala. Ramaswamy has also suggested that the increased economic possibilities provided by American-style capitalism are an effective remedy for India’s caste system. Critical acclaim was lavished upon his second book, “Nation of victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Way Back to Excellence,” which came out in September 2022.
The Kerala-origin entrepreneur, who has developed five drugs that became FDA-approved, is also a fierce critic of Communist China. In one of his recent speeches, he described China as at the top of the list of threats to the US and its allies. He stated, “taking on China will be a “historic challenge for America, because, unlike the Soviet Union, China puts the shoes on our feet and the phones in our pockets.”
The Indian-born surgeon Apurva Tiwari is Vivek’s wife. His brother Shankar Ramaswamy also runs a successful firm in the United States.
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