LurkerBaba
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The Mystery Monk Making Billions With 5-Hour Energy
In one corner of Manoj Bhargava's office is a cemetery of sorts. It's a Formica bookcase, its shelves lined with hundreds of garishly colored screw-top plastic bottles not much taller than shot glasses. Front and center is a Cadillac-red bottle of 5-Hour Energy, the two-ounce caffeine and vitamin elixir that purports to keep you alert without crashing. In eight years 5-Hour has gone from nowhere to $1 billion in retail sales. Truckers swear by it. So do the traders in Oliver Stone's 2010 sequel to Wall Street. So do hungover -students. It's $3 a bottle, and it has made Bhargava a fortune.
Bhargava was born in India in the prosperous northern city of Lucknow. His parents were well-off, with a villa surrounded by lush, award-winning gardens. They left for America in 1967, so his academic publisher father could get a Ph.D. at Wharton. The family landed hard in West Philadelphia in a third-floor, $80-a-month walk-up with threadbare carpets on seedy 47th Street. They went from having servants in India to splitting one Coca-Cola four ways as a treat.
Full article: The Mystery Monk Making Billions With 5-Hour Energy - ForbesBhargava claims to be the richest Indian in America—a title that officially belongs to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla—but trying to untangle Bhargava's business structure requires a 24-pack of 5-Hour Extra Strength. He could well be worth much more than Khosla's $1.3 billion. Living Essentials' closest comparable public company, energy drink giant Monster, trades at over 30 times earnings, making Bhargava easily a multibillionaire on paper.