Six months after becoming a father, Raj Sardana lost his engineering job in the US. With a young family to support, he had little room for uncertainty. Rather than send out resumes, the Delhi-born engineer put $25,000 of his savings into buying a small print shop in Georgia. It was a gamble that would take him far beyond the printing business, eventually helping him build a global IT services company and a fortune estimated at nearly Rs 20,000 crore.
Sardana's rise was far removed from the success story he would later become. When he first moved to the US, he washed dishes and mopped floors to pay for his education. Years later, faced with the loss of a steady job and the responsibility of a new family, he took another chance on himself, this time as an entrepreneur.
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From Delhi to the US With Just $100
Born in Delhi in 1960, Sardana grew up in a modest household. His parents, who had migrated to India during the 1947 Partition, made education a priority despite financial hardships.
In 1981, Sardana moved to the US to pursue a master's degree in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. He arrived with barely $100 in his pocket and took up a job at the university cafeteria to support himself.
“I started my life from scratch here,” Sardana told Authority Magazine. He recalled washing dishes and mopping floors to pay his tuition. Later, a research assistantship helped him keep studying.
Losing His Job Changed Everything
After graduating, Sardana built a career in engineering and eventually worked at Teledyne CAE on engines used in Tomahawk missiles. But in 1990, the end of the Cold War led to production cuts, and Sardana lost his job, the report added.
The timing could hardly have been worse. He had a mortgage, a six-month-old daughter and his parents living with him.
“I had no income to support my family,” he recalled in his interview with Authority Magazine.
Instead of returning to corporate employment, Sardana decided to start his own business. He invested $25,000 in a print shop in Georgia and gradually expanded into other small businesses, including gas stations and dry-cleaning stores.
Building a Multi-Billion-Dollar Business
In 1998, Sardana spotted an opportunity in the growing demand for technology talent. He launched American CyberSystems, which later became Innova Solutions, a staffing firm that connected US companies with tech talent in India.
It has since expanded to help clients such as Verizon, Centene, and Change Healthcare outsource technical projects, as per Forbes.
Innova Solutions, owned by Sardana and his immediate family, generated $2.4 billion in sales in 2022, the Forbes report added.
A New Generation Builds Its Own Path
Sardana's entrepreneurial journey has also drawn attention to his niece, Anjali Sardana, who founded Pronto, an instant house-help platform in India.
Launched in April 2025, Pronto connects households with professionals for everyday chores. Its valuation reached around $202 million (nearly Rs 2,000 crore) by July 2026, according to Tracxn, as reported by Moneycontrol.
While Raj built his business in technology staffing, Anjali is working to organise India's fragmented domestic-services market. Their journeys differ, but both began by spotting an opportunity and acting on it.
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