| Rishi Bhat | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1984 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, actor |
Rishi Bhat (born 1984) is a former child actor and internet entrepreneur. He co-starred alongside Hal Scardino and Litefoot in the 1995 film The Indian in the Cupboard, for which he received a Young Artist Award nomination. He went on to start the internet privacy company SiegeSoft, selling it for an estimated $40,000 cash and 1.5 million shares of stock[1] (worth roughly $3.4 million at the peak stock price) during the dot-com bubble of 2000, at age 15.
Bhat received widespread media attention in 2000 after selling SiegeSoft, appearing on television programs including Good Morning America, CNN, and MSNBC. He has also appeared in BusinessWeek,[1] Entrepreneur Magazine,[2] and the Financial Times. Less than two hours after Bhat's March 22, 2000 appearance on Good Morning America, the share price of publicly traded Zimtu Technologies (formerly Rocca Resources), the Vancouver-based mining penny stock firm that purchased SiegeSoft, hit an all time high of $2.24 - nearly double the $1.22 it was trading at six weeks prior.[3]
Bhat attended the University of Chicago Lab School, from which he graduated in 2002. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania[4] where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in 2006. Bhat subsequently co-founded Fone2Fone, a VC-backed mobile phone software startup company, where he served as CTO, in Philadelphia. In 2007, Fone2Fone was selected for the DemoPit at the TechCrunch40 conference, where its main product, Styky, was one of only 100 hot products selected from more than 700 applicants from 26 countries.[5]. As of Fall 2011, Bhat is pursuing a PhD in computer science[6], and enjoys making hip hop music in his free time.[7]
He is the son of Shrikant Bhat and Rita Gorawara-Bhat, immigrants to the United States from India. His mother is a social psychologist and his father is a metallurgical engineer.[8]