Latest Update: Bikram Choudhury's Total Wealth ( Updated) Net Worth 2026: Career Earnings & Assets

As one of the most talked-about figures, Bikram Choudhury has built a significant fortune. Our team analyzed the latest data to provide a clear picture of their income.

What Is Bikram Choudhury's Net Worth?

Choudhury has published the books "Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class" (1977) and "Bikram Yoga: The Guru Behind Hot Yoga Shows the Way to Radiant Health and Personal Fulfillment" (2007), and he appeared in the 2007 documentary "Yoga, Inc." He is the subject of the 2019 Netflix documentary "Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator."

In recent years, Bikram has been hit with several lawsuits alleging discrimination and sexual assault, and after leaving the United States in 2016, he began opening yoga studios in his native India.

Bikram emigrated to the U.S. in 1971 and began teaching yoga there. His first yoga studio opened in Los Angeles in 1974, and by 2006, there were more than 1,600 Bikram Yoga studios in 40 countries. "Sydney Morning Herald" reporter Brigid Delaney met with Choudhury in the early 2000s, and she said of the experience, "An entourage sat around him, literally at his feet. The vibe was fawning. When I spoke to some members of his entourage, they discussed him with a degree of reverence usually reserved for a religious figure or guru, not the founder of an LA-based yoga school." In the '90s, Bikram started offering certification courses and training instructors, and he taught celebrities such asMadonna,David Beckham, andLady Gaga. He also claimed to have taughtBill Clinton,Richard Nixon, andRonald Reagan. In 2009, Choudhury started claiming that Bikram Yoga was copyrighted and that people who were not authorized by him would not be allowed to teach it. In 2011, he sued Yoga to the People, which was founded by a former student of his, and the United States Copyright Office subsequently stated that yoga postures couldn't be copyrighted. Despite this, Yoga to the People ceased its use of Bikram's poses.

(Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images)

Bikram Choudhury is an Indian-born American yoga instructor who has a net worth of $75 million. Choudhury founded Bikram Yoga, a form of hot yoga performed in a series of 26 hatha yoga postures done in a hot environment.

Bikram Choudhury was born in 1944 in Calcutta, British India. Bikram has said that he studied under Bishnu Charan Ghosh, an Indian Hathayogi and bodybuilder, and though he claimed that he won the National India Yoga Championship three times as a teenager, India's first yoga competition didn't take place until 1974. Despite Choudhury's claims that he began studying with Ghosh at age 5, evidence from the Jerome Armstrong book "Calcutta Yoga" and the "30for30" podcast series shows that Bikram didn't study with him until the age of 18. Choudhury initially focused on massage and bodybuilding, and he has claimed that at age 20, he was in a crippling weightlifting accident and was told he would never be able to walk again. Bikram has said that with the help of Ghosh, he fully recovered within six months. In the '70s, he developed Bikram Yoga based on sequences that were created by Ghosh. He told "LA Weekly" in 2003, "From 84 postures, or 550 variations of the postures, I picked out 26 postures like antibiotic, and I put it in a sequence, like a song."

At the peak of his empire while his copyright was active, Bikram earned$7-10 million per yearin royalties paid by yoga studios all over the world who wished to use his format and name.

Ultimately, Bikram Choudhury's financial journey is a testament to their success.

Disclaimer: All net worth figures are estimates based on public data.