Bitcoin mania: How Big B and family's $250,000 investment rose to $17.5 mn

Amitabh Bachchan, the Kaun Banega Crorepati host, undoubtedly knows how to build his wealth. As bitcoin mania reaches a fever pitch, the value of a stock investment by the Bachchan family has risen from $250,000 to $17.5 million in two and a half years. The Bachchans, one of Hindi cinema’s biggest names, had made their first significant equity investment in an overseas company through the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) in 2015.

Business Standard reported in 2015 that the father-son duo, Amitabh and Abhishek invested $250,000 (approximately Rs 1.57 crore) in Meridian Tech Pte Limited.

Back then, Meridian Tech was not very well known. That dramatically changed last week when Meridian's prime asset Ziddu-.com was acquired by another Meenavalli-backed overseas company LongFin Corp just two days after the latter's listing on NASDAQ.

“The investments were made through two separate accounts – $150,000 from Amitabh's account, and $100,000 from a joint account belonging to Amitabh and Abhishek,” Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli, founder and chief executive of Meridian Tech, told Business Standard.