The upcoming United States Presidential elections is turning out to be an Indian American affair as tech entrepreneur Dr Shiva Ayyadurai became the fourth candidate from the community to announce his bid for the country's top post. He is running as an independent candidate.

Making the announcement, Ayyadurai said, “I am running for the President of the United States of America. We stand at crossroads where we can either head into a Golden Age or the Darkness. I stand before you as someone who is a personification of the American Dream.”

On his campaign website, Ayyadurai maintained that America becomes great when innovators, entrepreneurs, working people with skills and those committed to using common sense and reason run the country. He added, “The Founders of America were blacksmiths, engineers, soldiers, architects, entrepreneurs, scientists — they worked for a living and produced through their labour, products and services to help other citizens.”

The 59-year-old MIT scholar, who “invented email” when he was just 14, had earlier made headlines when he expressed interest in taking up the position of Twitter’s chief executive officer after Elon Musk said he wishes to step down from the post.

Mumbai-born Ayyadurai is an award-winning scientist and recently invented CytoSolveⓇ, a revolutionary platform for modeling complex biological phenomena, to support the development multi-combination medicines without animal testing. His parents immigrated to the US in 1970, when he was seven years old and settled in Paterson, New Jersey.