How are experienced software developers in India reaching a net worth of ₹15–20 crore? With salary alone it feels difficult to reach that level, even for developers earning well in product companies. Curious to understand what paths people have actually taken to build that kind of wealth. Some possibilities I can think of: early employees in startups getting ESOPs that grew significantly, RSUs from big tech or well-funded product companies, long-term investing in stocks or mutual funds, working abroad for 10–15 years and saving aggressively, starting a company or side business. If anyone knows friends, colleagues, or people in their network who have reached ₹15–20 Cr net worth as developers, what path did they follow
You had the answer in your post itself, what do you expect, an acknowledgment
Esops, real estate, or working in the US
There are a lot of factors, strategic and disciplined investment, diversifying the income sources, most important taking calculated risks. After a certain point you don't just think about salary, you have responsibilities and you plan accordingly. There is no single factor, it's a culmination of small strategic steps every day that compound over time. That being said, I also feel that moving forward there is definitely going to be some sort of rationalization of SWE salaries given the AI race with companies realizing engineers are at somewhat disadvantage in terms of negotiating because having a job is going to be a priority. Again, this is a very early speculation but that's how the current trajectory looks like. So, it's only reasonable to start early and diversify the income source and plan things accordingly
Investing in Indian mutual funds
Especially with the market performing so poorly
By becoming real estate developers
ESOPs plus a US stint plus compounding over 15-20 years, salary alone won't get you there
Mostly rsu and espp, the reason is nasdaq has compounded at a high rate. And also employees get generous rsus. Anyone that worked in good US product companies should have 10-30 cr, if they have been working for the last 15 years. Nvdia is a special case, even some regular low employees should have 100 cr, if they worked and saved their stocks and rsus. I think broadcom also falls in this category. Early folks in flipkart, phonepay also made 10 or more crores. Same at razorypay, the founder himself told, all early employees made 10-50 crs, and these folks are just entering their 30s now
It depends largely on the family background, if you are a software engineer and your salary is 20 Lakhs plus and your spouse is earning and you don't have dependent parents and already have your own house where you stay, then pretty much everything you earn apart from daily minimum expenses, it becomes very easy to save, invest and grow your wealth, one of my friends who got a job right after engineering was staying with his parents and everything including his food and other expenses were taken care of by his parents and he used to live in the same house and for nearly 8 to 9 years he was saving and recently got married and already has a net worth of 2.5 cr and even his marriage expenses were taken care of by his parents, so in the next 10 years I would imagine his savings would only go up easily to 10 to 20 crores
Join FAANG, resign or get laid off, follow your new found passion for teaching, sell 5-10k courses to thousands of desperate folks, and you are now over 10cr