Indian- born Gurbaksh Chahal is one of America's most successful young entrepreneurs

Gurbaksh Singh Chahal (born July 17, 1982) is an American entrepreneur, best-selling author, TV personality, motivational speaker, and self made multi-millionaire. By the age of 25, he founded two advertising companies worth $340 million, more recently appeared on several TV shows and published a memoir.

G, as he is known, was born in the town of Tarn Taran, near Amritsar in Punjab, India to Avtar and Arjinder Chahal. In 1985, his parents received a visa for America through a lottery-based system in India, and the following year, when he was four, the family settled in San Jose, California. His parents had arrived with only $25 to their name, and they struggled at menial jobs to make a future for their four children.

Business Ventures

On December 15, 1998, aged 16, Gurbaksh Chahal dropped out of high school and started his first venture, ClickAgents. ClickAgents was an advertising network focused on performance-based advertising. Two years later, on November 1, 2000, ValueClick announced it agreed to buy ClickAgents in a $22 million all-stock merger. Chahal had a three year non-compete agreement with ValueClick.

In January 12, 2004, Chahal formed BlueLithium another advertising network which was recognized as an innovator in the online advertising space in a Business 2.0 article. In 2006, under Chahal’s leadership, BlueLithium was named Top Innovator by AlwaysOn. On October 15, 2007, Yahoo! bought BlueLithium for $300 million in cash. He remained CEO of the company through the transition period.

In September 2009, Chahal started his third venture, gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media. He remains the Chairman & CEO of the Company. On December 1, 2009, gWallet raised its first institutional round of financing totaling $12.5 million from Adam Street Partners, Trinity Ventures, Stanford University and various others.

Media Appearances

On October 23, 2008, Chahal appeared on the The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss his life and business journey. In his interview, Oprah introduced him as “one of the youngest and also the wealthiest entrepreneurs on the planet Earth”. He has appeared on other talk shows such as The Bonnie Hunt Show, The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, CNBC, Current TV and on Neil Cavuto’s show.

Chahal appeared in the pilot episode of the Fox TV reality show Secret Millionaire, where he went undercover in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco to give away at least $100,000 of his own money.

On January 8, 2009, he was featured on Extra TV as America’s Most Eligible Bachelor. Chahal currently lives in San Francisco, California.

Source: Gurbaksh Chahal, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gurbaksh_Chahal&oldid=335601867 (last visited Jan. 4, 2010).