Ukrainian Vlad Shmunis is now a billionaire owning RingCentral in the United States

Vladislav Shmunis, who was born in Odesa, made his first appearance in the new Forbes list of billionaires. His estate is estimated at $1.3 billion. The main asset is his share in RingCentral, a provider of cloud-based communications.

Shmunis moved to the United States in the ’70s with his family. He graduated from the University of San Francisco and worked at HP and Amex. In 1993, he founded his first business, Ring Zero Systems. The startup created a Windows application for VoIP and mail, and it was pre-installed on a PC. Afterward, Motorolla took over the company, and Shmunis became a millionaire.

In 1999, he founded RingCentral. She offered cheap VoIP – numbers of any cities in America, calls and receiving voicemails, automated attendant. Tariffs started at $10/month, and customers were from small businesses. By 2012, the company already had more than 250,000 paying users and a revenue of $300 million.

In October 2019, RingCentral announced its partnership with Avaya. Shmunis will pay $500 million to Avaya to get access to a new cloud platform with 100 million users.

RingCentral is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Before the deal with Avaya, the company value was about $10 billion. Capitalization has now increased to $13.4 billion. Shmunis, CEO at RingCentral, has 8.5% of the company’s shares.