Secretive Indian Twitter investor makes $4.7 billion

Secretive Indian Twitter investor makes $4.7 billion
PHOTO: Secretive Indian Twitter investor makes $4.7 billion

The man is so secretive that he is reported to have an assistant who scrubs the Internet of his personal photographs and information, the Times of India reported.

So who is the secretive India-born Twitter investor who earned an estimated US$3.8 billion (S$4.7 billion) in the tech titan's recent initial public offering (IPO)?

The India-born Mr Rizvi, 47, owns a 15.6 per cent stake in the IPO darling, but what is known about him would barely fill a 40-character tweet.

On the Rizvi Traverse investment firm website, its founder's biography is poetically brief, reading only: "Mr Rizvi is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Rizvi Traverse Management and related entities. Mr Rivzi is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the school's Executive Board."

Other facts known about the man are that he moved with his parents to the US in 1971 and that his father, Mr Raza Rizvi, was teaching psychology at a college in Iowa Falls, the New York Daily News reported. His brother Ashraf is a hedge fund manager.

Also, according to Rizvi Traverse's website, the firm holds large-scale equity investments in several other well-known brands, including Facebook and Playboy.

The New York Times labelled the investor as a "strategic power broker who prefers to operate behind the scenes".


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