When Sharran Srivatsaa moved to the United States as a teenager, he probably never imagined that he would one day lead a multi-million dollar company. He was, after all, told repeatedly that his thick Indian accent made him unemployable. To make ends meet as a young student, he worked as a janitor.
Srivatsaa, today the CEO of Acquisition.com, recounted how he overcame the challenge of a “thick accent” and found success in the United States.
“He had such a thick accent”
A video of Acquisition.com CEO Alex Hormozi speaking with American motivational speaker Tony Robbins prompted Sharran Srivatsaa to recall his early days in the US.
During the course of the conversation, Hormozi revealed that the CEO of his company, Sharran Srivatsaa, worked as a janitor when he came to the US from India two decades ago. Srivatsaa improved his by listening to Tony Robbins’ tapes, Hormozi said.
“There was an Indian guy who came here to the US 20-something years ago and he was working as a janitor. And he had such a thick accent that they said, ‘you will never get employed anywhere, you have to learn how to speak.’
“And he tried to get ‘How to Get Rid of An Indian Accent’ tapes and those didn’t really exist,” said Hormozi. Instead, Srivatsaa was told he could check out Tony Robbins tapes.
“And so, he’s mopping the floors and he’s doing it. And that man then started a software company, scaled that, sold it, started another company, sold that for 3.4 billion. And I met him right around that time and he’s my partner at Acquisition.com,” said the founder of Acquisition.com.
“I came to the US with a thick Indian accent”
Sharran Srivatsaa himself vouched for the authenticity of this story as he responded to the video on X.
“I’m the Indian guy Alex Hormozi and Tony Robbins are talking about. I came to the US with a thick Indian accent and was told I’d never get employed anywhere if I couldn’t learn how to speak,” he wrote.
In an earlier LinkedIn post, Srivatsaa had revealed that he came to the US in 1997 as a freshman and worked as a janitor to support himself.
“Freshman year of college I had just arrived from India with a super thick accent. I was working as a custodian, scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets to pay my way through school. The head custodian told me to get English tapes from the library to improve my accent. They didn’t have any. The librarian handed me Tony Robbins’ “Personal Power” instead,” he had recalled.
“I taught myself how to speak properly”
In his recent X post, the Indian-American CEO said he taught himself to speak properly by listening to the tapes, and called it a lesson in determination.
“I checked out Tony Robbins tapes from the public library and listened to them every night as I mopped floors,” Sharran Srivatsaa said as he advised his followers to never give up.
“This is why I live by the saying that not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do. I could’ve listened to the employers and stayed as a janitor. But your starting point is not your story… it’s just the first chapter of it,” he advised.
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Sharran Srivatsaa’s rise and rise
Born in India, Srivatsaa moved to the United States as a teenager to pursue his education.
After completing his education, Srivatsaa built a career in finance. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Luther College and later completed an MBA with honours from Vanderbilt University.
He worked as a banker at and Credit Suisse before moving into entrepreneurship.
In 2011, Srivatsaa left Wall Street and took over as president of Teles Properties, a Beverly Hills-based luxury real estate company. When he joined, the company was already generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales but was not growing as expected. Over five years, he helped scale the company significantly, growing its sales volume and eventually helping it reach a valuation of around $3.4 billion before it was acquired by Douglas Elliman.
After Teles Properties, Srivatsaa became involved in the real estate technology and investment space. He was president of Real Brokerage, where he helped build the company into one of the fastest-growing publicly traded real estate brokerages.
He later moved into investing and business coaching. He serves as Chairman of Highland Prime, which invests in service-based businesses, and is involved with ARC Multifamily Group, focused on multifamily real estate investments. He has also worked as a venture capitalist and advisor to entrepreneurs.
Today, Srivatsaa is the CEO of Acquisition.com. He is also a TEDx speaker, podcast host, entrepreneur, investor and business coach.
