India has more billionaires than ever before but they’ve had billions clipped off their wealth in the last year, says Forbes Magazine, the bible of wealth measurement which has just published its annual global Rich List.
A downward trending list, inevitably, has its own share of relatively new names, one of whom is Calcutta-based clothing retailer Ravi Modi who’s created a wedding-wear empire through his Manyavar fashion chain. He’s worth $3.1 billion from the $3.75 billion he was worth after his hugely successful 2022 IPO. But he's still the second richest Calcutta businessman after Benu Gopal Bangur ($7.3 billion). Sanjiv Goenka, meanwhile, remains in third place with wealth of $2.1 billion.
This valuation makes the businessman who made his fortune selling affordable fashion for Indian weddings Calcutta’s second-richest billionaire.
India’s biggest loser, of course, is industrialist Gautam Adani who was worth $90 billion in the last Rich List. He then rose to a peak of $145 billion but his fortune is now down to $47 billion in the wake of the blistering Hindenburg Research report. He has strongly denied the US hedge fund’s allegations that his namesake corporate empire engaged in “brazen” accounting fraud and share price manipulation. Gautam’s brother Vinod Adani, who’s reckoned to be worth $9.8 billion, also makes it to 184th position in the global rich list. He’s not included in the India list as he’s a citizen of Cyprus.
India and Asia’s richest man is Mukesh Ambani, a familiar figure on the wealth charts. Ambani is now worth a hefty $83.4 billion but even that is down by eight per cent from $90.7 billion in last year’s Rich List. Ambani is now the ninth-richest person in the world. There are 169 Indian billionaires this year compared to 166 a year ago. This makes India a wealth superpower in third position. We have more billionaires than every other country apart from China which has 495 billionaires and the US which has 735.
The total wealth of India’s billionaires, though, has fallen 10 per cent from an astronomical $750 billion to $675 billion and that’s largely because of Adani’s crashing fortunes. “The majority of that decline comes from one high-profile saga: the stock rout of companies in the Adani Group, following a January report of fraud allegations by short-seller Hindenburg Research,” says Forbes Magazine.
Adani is still India’s second-richest man by a long stretch and he’s followed by tech giant Shiv Nadar who is worth $25.6 billion, which is down 11 per cent from a year ago. In fourth position is vaccine king Cyrus Poonawalla who’s worth $22.6 billion – though he’s also down by 7 per cent from his peak when the Covid-19 pandemic was still boosting demand for his products.
Steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, who’s UK-based but still holds an Indian passport and so qualifies to be on the richest Indians’ list, comes in at fifth position, worth $17.7 billion. Mittal used to be the UK’s wealthiest man but his sprawling steel empire has produced mixed results in recent years. His once highly profitable Ukraine plant is near the frontline in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Other familiar names in India’s Top Ten Richest include pharmaceutical billionaire Dilip Shangvi ($15.6 billion), retail star Ramakrishna Damani (15.3 billion), industrialist Kumar Birla ($14.2 billion) and banker Uday Kotak ($12.9 billion). Shangvi is the only one of them who’s wealth is unchanged. All the others have moved downward, even if only by not huge amounts.
At a lower level in the billionaire charts there’s one-time banker Falguni Nayar who retains the title as India’s richest self-made woman at $2.6 billion even though the shares of her online beauty and fashion company Nykaa have tumbled steeply. She was worth $4.5 billion in last year’s list.
Other new women who’ve made it to the list because of personal tragedies include Rekha Jhunjhunwala ($5.1 billion) who has taken the place of her late husband, the stock market wizard Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, and Rohiqa Cyrus Mistry ($7 billion), whose husband Cyrus Mistry, died in a car crash. The Pallonji Mistry group had to face two deaths last year – those of the group’s 93-year-old patriarch Pallonji Mistry and his son also passed away a few months later.
Other newcomers to the list include Bangalore-based Nikhil Kamath and his brother Nithin, who cofounded discount brokerage Zerodha. Nikhil’s wealth is pegged at $1.1 billion while his older sibling Nithin is worth $2.7 billion.
Dropouts include Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal and Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
The 99-year-old Keshub Mahindra, chairman emeritus, Mahindra & Mahindra is the oldest Indian billionaire worth $1.2 billion.
Other Rich List powerhouses include Germany with 126 billionaires and Russia with 105. Obviously, the number of billionaires in India does not reflect the overall wealth of its citizens.
