Arun Pudur

Arun Pudur (born October 10, 1977) is an Indian Businessman, Serial Entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. His operations headquarters are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and New York, USA. Pudur started his scooters fixing career in his garage at age 13, he then started breeding champion dogs before venturing into technology. He is the Founder and Group President of Celframe, the world’s second largest Office Productivity Suite software company. In his tenure, Celframe rose from a backend support company to a Multi-Billion Dollar Technology company with businesses around the Global while it is privately held and majority owned by him. Today he is consistently ranked in the billionaires list. Arun Pudur tops Asia U40 wealth list with more than $4 billion and is also ranked 10th among World’s Richest in the list published by Bloomberg, CNBC, WSJ, Entrepreneur, CNN among other major publications worldwide. Pudur is the only Indian Billionaire to make the list which includes Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook among other billionaires. Pudur, unlike most Asian Billionaires, is self-made. He made his first million at age 21 and at 26 his first billion. Arun Pudur invests his personal funds for all of his projects. After much pressure from Friends, Family, Private Equity and Investment Bankers he later opened up for investments in Browsify Corporation, his new technology venture called as “A Billionaire’s Start Up” where he allowed his Friends and Family to invest and his two recent Mining Ventures, Leema Platinum which has proven PGM reserves to the tune of $9 billion and Mankele Gold which has gold reserves valued at $3 billion were opened for outside investors. He put himself through college even though his family is from a privileged background. Pudur is known for openly criticizing Microsoft for using business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by numerous court rulings against Microsoft. Pudur graduated from Bangalore University in 1998 in the top percentile of his college. He was then persuaded by a friend to join an acquaintance’s computer training centre. When he joined, the company was making less than $40,000p.a and when he left the company after 9 months he transformed it to $350,000 p.a winning him accolades from the parent company. He used to spend 17 hours a day when working there and learnt that hard work doesn’t pay when his boss refused to pay him his commissions and dues thus pushing Pudur to decide to quit his job and start Celframe. ==Celframe== Celframe is a privately held software company which was initially focused on back office and software outsourcing business. Pudur at age 21 had a million dollars in revenue which was the first year of Celframe and in next five years by the time he was 26 Celframe had a Billion dollars in turnover. Celframe started its business in Bangalore, India with offices in Chennai, India and New York, USA but in 2003 Celframe moved majority of its operations to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and in 2008 it was awarded the MSC status in Malaysia making the company completely Tax-free. In 2005, Pudur was determined to make Celframe a global brand so he decided to develop software products. In 2006, the first product was released aptly named Celframe Office 2006 an office productivity suite to rival hugely popular Microsoft Office followed by Celframe Office 2007 (Vista) and later Celframe Office 2008. Celframe Office is currently ranked No.3 in office productivity suites in the world. Following the success of Celframe Office, other products including Celframe CRM, Celframe Business Solutions were released. Presently Celframe Products are distributed in 58 countries worldwide and had built the business predominantly by participating in Technology Trade shows like CES, Cebit, Pikom and other trade shows. Celframe only focuses on Government and corporate customers which include some of the Fortune 500 companies. Celframe has acquired over seven companies in the past decade and also has invested in Celframe Security labs which focuses in Security Solutions and most recently in Browsify Corporation which is to be involved in Internet of Things business. ==Pudur Group== Pudur Group is Arun’s Holdings Company which was started by him backed by his success in his software business. The Group is a diversified conglomerate with interest in Mining, Oil & Gas, Real Estate, Trading, Hotels Resorts & casino, Investments, Advisory among other businesses. This was possible with his established partner network from his software business. His noteworthy investments was in a Gold Mining Company is ARX Gold Corporation which said to have over 16 Million ounces of proven gold reserves in its mines in Australia. He also has Platinum, Diamond and Gold mines in South Africa among other countries. His future plans include venturing into Vegan Fast Food Chains, Ayurveda Centers and research on Ancient Indian studies after listing each of his companies. ===Philanthropy=== Pudur is chairman of the Pudur Foundation, established in 2013 which focuses its philanthropic efforts on providing Education and equal Rights. The foundation is managed by his wife Eliena Pudur and Pudur contributed 10% of his net worth to the foundation. He believes that giving has to be on-going and must start when you get your first pay check and not after retiring. His family has been donating 100% of all its collection in its Temples to Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams which in turn provides free food, free education, free health care among other charitable works. ===Recognition=== In 2015, Pudur was listed as a billionaire in various publications including Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, WealthX, Entrepreneur, NDTV among dozens more. He was listed with $4 Billion as his net worth and placed 10th in the list which included #1 Mark Zuckerberg, #2 Dustin Moskovitz, #3 Jan Koum, #4 Scott Duncan, #5 Sean Parker, #6 Yang Huiyan, #7 Alejandro Santo Domingo Dávila, #8 Elizabeth Holmes, # 9 Eduardo Saverin. In May 2015, CNBC listed him as the Richest Asian Billionaire and he was the only Indian Billionaire in both the lists. Pudur ranks in the Top 20 of Global Indian Billionaires in the Forbes Billionaire ranking and Rank #6 among his billionaire counterparts in Malaysia Forbes Billionaire ranking. His net worth of $4 billion puts him at same Rank of #418 as Anil Ambani of India in the Forbes List. ===Social media=== Pudur was included in a thought leadership book called “Tweets from The Top” published by Twitter which was a collection of curated tweets. He was chosen as one of the top leaders in business in the Asia Pacific Region. The collection included tweets from Narendra Modi, Abe Shinzo, Tony Abbott, Lee Hsien Loong Joko Widodo, Mohd Najib Tun Razak, Anand Mahindra among other leaders which exemplified the theme of “Local Voices, Global Reach”. Pudur has a strong following in social media with over hundred and eighty thousand followers in Twitter and tens of thousands in Facebook.