Paul Soros, Da Vek and the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy: From Kerala to DC, an astonishing journey
CINCINNATI, OHIO: From Harvard rapper to affluent business tycoon, Vivek Ramaswamy has run the gamut of labels before turning into one of the most promising contenders in the 2024 US presidential race.
The 38-year-old Indian-American tech entrepreneur launched his 2024 presidential bid during a live interview on Fox News’s prime time show Tucker Carlson in February 2023.
With a net worth of $950 million, Ramaswamy appears to be the second-wealthiest person competing in the Republican presidential primary, behind only Donald Trump, whose net worth is estimated to be around $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Before making his political debut, the “anti-woke” warrior founded a slew of multi-million businesses and also rose as the author of a bestselling Center Street book.
Ramaswamy’s transition from typical Kerela boy to Da Vek
Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 9, 1985, to Tamil-speaking Brahmin parents who had emigrated from Palakkad district in Kerala, India where the family had an ancestral home.
His mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, a graduate of the Mysore Medical College & Research Institute, worked as a geriatric psychiatrist, while his father, V Ganapathy Ramaswamy, was a graduate of the National Institute of Technology Calicut and a patent attorney for General Electric.
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Growing up, Ramaswamy became an accomplished pianist, a nationally ranked tennis player, and the valedictorian of his Jesuit high school.
In 2003, he went to Harvard University, where he studied biology, and cofounded StudentBusinesses.com, a website for student entrepreneurs to pitch potential investors.
However, during his time at Harvard, Ramaswamy went through an atypical transition and garnered decent clout as a libertarian-minded rap artist who went by the stage name “Da Vek.”
Ramaswamy previously revealed that his interest in rap dates back to the early aughts when he first heard Eminem’s breakout hit “Lose Yourself”.
He discovered an insurgent-like identity in Eminem, one that still inspires him. In his previous campaign events, Ramaswamy was seen rapping the lyrics to the 2002 chartbuster.
However, Eminem doesn’t seem to like his tributes as he threatened to take legal action against him if used any of his works in future campaign events.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s rise as business magnate
After earning a degree from Harvard University, Ramaswamy joined the hedge fund QVT, where he specialized in pharmaceutical investments.
While continuing to work, he also managed to win a post-graduate scholarship from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which he used to attend Yale Law School in 2011.
Around the same time, he met his now-wife, Apoorva, a throat surgeon, who was studying medicine at Yale University.
Apoorva and Ramaswamy have been married since 2015 and are the proud parents of two young sons. After earning $7 million in the first seven years of his career, the 2024 White House hopeful left his job at QVT in 2014 and started an investment holding company named Roivant Sciences.
Roivant's strategy was to acquire patents from bigger pharmaceutical companies for medications that hadn't yet been developed effectively and then sell them to the market.
A year later, Ramaswamy raised $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary Axovant Sciences in an attempt to market intepirdine as a drug for Alzheimer's disease.
The year that Axovant joined the New York Stock Exchange, Ramaswamy reported more than $38 million of income on his tax return.
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However, the company suffered a major blow in September 2017 when it announced that intepirdine had failed in its large clinical trial.
Following the announcement, the firm’s worth plummeted drastically; it dropped by 75% in a single day and kept going down after that.
Stakeholders lost most of their money in Axovant’s downfall but Ramaswamy managed to survive as he still had several other drugs.
In 2020, Japanese pharma giant Sumitomo Dainippon paid $3 billion to acquire five of them, as well as a 10% stake in Roivant.
Vivek Ramaswamy stepping into the world of politics
In January 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down from his company, citing his "increasing public engagement" in a letter to shareholders.
Seven months later, he penned his best-selling book “Woke, Inc.,” which criticized corporate America's increasing attention to social justice concerns and the ESG movement's takeover of Wall Street.
Around the same time, Ramaswamy started the “anti-woke” asset management firm, Strive, and steered his career towards politics. He even considered running in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio.
In February 2023, he declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
In the period from February to July 2023, Ramaswamy lent his campaign more than $15 million; by the conclusion of the second quarter of 2023, his campaign had roughly $9 million in cash on hand.