Washington: Eight Indian American entrepreneurs have made it to the Forbes' 2007 Midas list, an annual ranking of the US' top 100 tech dealmakers.

Leading the Indian pack is tech wizard Ram Shriram, placed fourth on the list released last week. Two years ago, Shriram was one of just two Indian Americans to find a place in the Forbes' list of 400 richest Americans, the other being acoustics pioneer Amar Bose.

Behind Shriram is Arjun Gupta at number 37. An MBA from Stanford, he is the founder and managing partner of TeleSoft Partners, a venture capital firm that focuses on high-tech start-ups.

Other Indian Americans on the Midas list include Parag Saxena (38), Rob Soni (42), Promode Haque (52), Navin Chaddha (58), Srinivas Akkaraju (84) and Ravi Mhatre (95).

Shriram's claim to fame has been his association with Google, where he has been a founding board member, director and angel investor. In 2005, his net worth was put at $1.3 billion. A technology industry insider for over 25 years and a former executive with Netscape and Amazon, Shriram founded his own company, Sherpalo, in California in 2000.

Forbes' latest recognition of Shriram comes for his funding of Naukri.com, India's leading classified site dealing with jobs, matrimony and real estate. He has also invested in Mumbai's PayMate and travel site Cleartrip.

"If new deals are any indication of future exits, we will soon see many more acquisitions and IPOs (initial public offerings) of fledgling firms from China, India, Korea and Eastern Europe," says Forbes, which has focused on individuals who deploy venture capital to create wealth for their investors and build valuable, long-lasting companies.

"These are heady times indeed for the venture capital market. Venture firms raised $25 billion in new money last year. In the past three years, the length of a typical investment cycle, they have raised $75 billion. Expect plenty of blockbusters - and grand busts - in the near future," says the magazine.

The top five on the Forbes list are Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, L. John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreas von Bechtolsheim of Sun Microsystems, Ram Shriram of Sherpalo, and David Cheriton of Stanford University.

Next was Ronald Conway, ranked sixth in the annual listing, followed by Michael Grimes of Morgan Stanley, Lawrence Sonsini of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, Jay Hoag of Technology Crossover Ventures, with Thomas Ng of Granite Global Ventures at number 10.