Another Covid-19 wave is clearing across India and absolute cases presently surpass 12 million. Be that as it may, the nation’s financial exchange has disregarded its pandemic funk to scale new pinnacles; the benchmark Sensex is up 75% from a year prior. The all out number of Indian tycoons rose to 140 from 102 a year ago; their joined abundance has almost multiplied to $596 billion.
Success rules at the top: The three most extravagant Indians alone have added quite recently more than $100 billion between them. Mukesh Ambani, who has effectively enhanced his oil and gas realm into quick rising areas like telecom and retail, recovered his spot as Asia’s most extravagant individual, with a total assets of $84.5 billion.
Foundation investor Gautam Adani got a faltering $42 billion more extravagant as portions of his organizations, including Adani Enterprises and Adani Green Energy, soared. With his fortune up five-overlay since 2020, Adani is currently the second-most extravagant Indian, a spot recently involved by retailing ruler Radhakishan Damani, whose fortune was separated for the current year. His sibling Gopikishan Damani is recorded independently interestingly dependent on new data about his property. Adani, who shares Gujarati roots and an arrangement making nature with Ambani, extended forcefully into air terminals, determined by the movement stoppage. He likewise got France’s Total, his accomplice in the gas business, to put resources into his sustainable power organization.
Two of the ten most extravagant Indians get their abundance from medical services, an area that is appreciating a pandemic lift all throughout the planet. Antibody tycoon Cyrus Poonawalla’s Serum Institute of India, run by his 40-year-old child Adar, joined the Covid-19 immunizations race ahead of schedule by fashioning numerous organizations and putting $800 million in building another manufacturing plant. Hits of Poonawalla’s Covishield, the made-in-India form of the Covid-19 immunization created by the Oxford University-AstraZeneca consolidate, are currently being given the nation over and traded also. In the wake of slipping a year ago, pharma financier Dilip Shanghvi moved once again into the main 10, impelled by a leap in portions of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries.
Nineteen Indian newcomers joined the list, while another 19 returned to the list after falling off in the past. Among the new faces is octogenarian Prathap Reddy, founder and chairman of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, whose chain of Apollo Hospitals is treating Covid-19 patients. Arvind Lal, who founded and runs diagnostics chain Dr.Lal PathLabs, which got government approval to conduct Covid-19 tests, also makes his debut.
Mukesh Ambani
NET WORTH: $84.5 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: DIVERSIFIED
RESIDENCE: MUMBAI
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Ambani accomplished a fund-raising feat, garnering $35 billion through a string of deals to achieve his target of reducing his flagship Reliance Industries’ net debt to zero by 2021. He also sold a third of telecom unit Jio to marquee investors such as Facebook and Google and offloaded 10% of Reliance Retail to private equity firms such as KKR and General Atlantic, plus concluded a $7.3 billion rights issue of Reliance shares.
Mukesh Ambani chairs and runs $74 billion (revenue) Reliance Industries, which has interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom and retail.
Reliance was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer.
After his father’s death in 2002, Ambani and his younger sibling Anil divvied up the family empire.
In 2016, Reliance sparked a price war in India’s hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Ambani raised more than $20 billion selling a third of Jio to a string of investors, such as Facebook and Google.
Gautam Adani
NET WORTH: $50.5 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: INFRASTRUCTURE
RESIDENCE: AHMEDABAD
Adani acquired a 74% stake in Mumbai International Airport, the country’s second-busiest, last September. He also sold 20% in his listed renewables firm, Adani Green Energy, to French energy giant Total for $2.5 billion.
- Ports tycoon Gautam Adani controls Mundra Port in his home state of Gujarat.
- His $13 billion (revenue) Adani Group’s interests include power generation and transmission, edible oil, real estate and defence.
- Adani’s overseas assets include Australia’s Abbott Point port and the Carmichael coal mine, billed as one of the world’s largest.
- In June 2019, Adani got permission to start work on the Australian coal mine after a 9-year wait.
- Adani acquired a 74% stake in Mumbai International Airport, India’s second-busiest, in September 2020.
Shiv Nadar
NET WORTH: $23.5 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: SOFTWARE SERVICES
RESIDENCE: DELHI
The tech titan stepped down as chairman of $9.9 billion (revenues) HCL Technologies last July, handing over the position to his only daughter, Roshni Nadar Malhotra.
- Indian IT pioneer Shiv Nadar cofounded HCL in a garage in 1976 to make calculators and microprocessors.
- Today, he chairs HCL Technologies, a $9.9 billion (revenue) company, which is India’s third-largest software services provider by market cap.
- In July 2020, he stepped down as chairman of HCL Technologies, handing over the position to his daughter, Roshni Nadar Malhotra.
- HCL Technologies, which employs 150,000 people in 49 countries worldwide, hires high school grads and trains them on the job.
- One of India’s leading philanthropists, Nadar has donated $662 million to his Shiv Nadar Foundation, which backs education-related causes.
Radhakishan Damani
NET WORTH: $16.5 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: RETAIL, INVESTMENTS
RESIDENCE: MUMBAI
The low-profile retailing king’s listed supermarket chain Avenue Supermarts operates 221 DMart stores across the country. His brother Gopikishan is also a billionaire.
- Veteran Mumbai investor Radhakishan Damani became India’s retail king after the March 2017 IPO of his supermarket chain Avenue Supermart.
- Damani got into retailing in 2002 with one store in suburban Mumbai. Today he has 214 DMart stores across India.
- Damani also holds stakes in a range of companies, from tobacco firm VST industries to cement producer India Cements.
- His property portfolio includes the 156-room Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag, a popular beachfront getaway close to Mumbai.
Uday Kotak
NET WORTH: $15.9 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: BANKING
RESIDENCE: MUMBAI
India’s richest banker founded and runs Kotak Mahindra Bank, which is among the country’s top four in the private sector. Last June, Kotak sold shares worth $950 million to reduce his stake in the bank to 26% as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India.
- Spurning his family’s trading business, Uday Kotak started a finance firm in 1985 then went on convert it into a bank in 2003.
- His Kotak Mahindra Bank is now among India’s top four banks in the private sector, boosted by its 2014 acquisition of ING Bank’s Indian operations.
- Kotak’s 811 app draws its name from November 8, the day in 2016 when the government cancelled 86% of all rupees in circulation.
- In June 2020, Kotak sold some shares to reduce his stake in the bank as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India.
Lakshmi Mittal
NET WORTH: $14.9 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: STEEL
RESIDENCE: LONDON
In February, Mittal stepped down as CEO of ArcelorMittal, the $53.3 billion (revenue) steel behemoth, ceding the spot to his son, Aditya. Mittal remains executive chairman of the company.
- Lakshmi Mittal serves as chairman of $53.3 billion (revenue) ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel and mining company by output.
- Hailing from a steel clan, he separated from his siblings to start Mittal Steel then went on to merge the company with France’s Arcelor in 2006.
- The company reported a net loss of $0.7 billion in 2020, a year in which steel shipments declined by close to a fifth.
- In 2019, Arcelor and Nippon Steel completed their $5.9 billion acquisition of Essar Steel, once controlled by billionaires Shashi and Ravi Ruia.
- In January 2021, Mittal ceded the CEO’s position to his son, Aditya Mittal, but remains executive chairman of Arcelor Mittal.
Kumar Birla
NET WORTH: $12.8 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: COMMODITIES
RESIDENCE: MUMBAI
Fourth generation heir of a sprawling commodities empire, Birla’s expansion into telecom has cost him dearly. His Vodafone Idea, rebranded as Vi, a joint venture between his Idea Cellular and U.K.’s Vodafone Group, has been racking up losses battling Ambani’s Jio.
- Commodities king Kumar Birla is the fourth generation head of the storied, $48.3 billion (revenue) Aditya Birla Group.
- The group’s interests span cement and aluminium to telecom and financial services.
- Birla inherited the family empire at age 28 when his father Aditya Birla died in 1995.
- In October 2019, The European Commission approved the $2.6 billion acquisition by his Novelis of Aleris, an aluminium producer in Ohio.
- His telecom firm Vodafone Idea, formed by the 2018 merger between his Idea Cellular and Vodafone India, was renamed Vi.
Cyrus Poonawalla
NET WORTH: $12.7 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: VACCINES
RESIDENCE: PUNE
Poonawalla’s Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines by number of doses, is on the frontlines of India’s fight against Covid-19, with multiple vaccine partnerships orchestrated by his son Adar, Serum’s CEO. Adar also struck a deal this year to acquire a 60% stake in listed finance firm Magma Fincorp for $475 million.
- Son of a horse breeder, Cyrus Poonawalla founded Serum Institute of India in 1966 and built it into the world’s largest vaccine maker (by doses).
- Serum produces over 1.5 billion doses annually of a range of vaccines, including for measles, polio and flu.
- Under his U.K.-educated son Adar, Serum’s CEO, the company has invested $800 million to build a new factory to make Covid-19 vaccines.
- Serum has multiple Covid-19 vaccine partnerships and has launched Covishield, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
- In February 2021, his son struck a deal to acquire a 60% stake in listed finance firm Magma Fincorp for $475 million.
Dilip Shanghvi
NET WORTH: $10.9 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: PHARMACEUTICALS
RESIDENCE: MUMBAI
Shanghvi, who founded and runs listed generics drug maker Sun Pharmaceuticals, returns to the top ten, thanks to a 68% jump in the company’s shares.
- Son of a pharma distributor, Dilip Shanghvi borrowed $200 from his father to start Sun Pharmaceutical Industries in 1983 to make psychiatric drugs.
- The company is India’s most valuable listed pharma outfit with annual revenue of $4.5 billion.
- Shanghvi grew Sun through a series of shrewd acquisitions, the biggest of which was the purchase of rival Ranbaxy Laboratories for $4 billion in 2014.
- Shanghvi has personally invested in renewable energy and oil and gas.
Sunil Mittal & family
NET WORTH: $10.5 BILLION
SOURCE OF WEALTH: TELECOM
RESIDENCE: DELHI
His Bharti Airtel, a joint venture with Singapore’s Singtel, is India’s second-largest telecom operator after Ambani’s Jio. In January, Mittal’s son Kavin announced on Twitter that his SoftBank-backed start-up Hike, once considered as a rising unicorn and India’s answer to WhatsApp, had shut down its messaging service.
- Telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel is among India’s largest mobile phone operators with more than 423 million customers.
- Airtel, which has SingTel as its partner, is embroiled in a bruising price war with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio.
- Mittal also owns Airtel Payments Bank, a niche bank, in a joint venture with Kotak Mahindra Bank, controlled by fellow billionaire Uday Kotak.
- In May 2020, Mittal acquired a stake in listed AU Small Finance Bank through his personal investment firm.
- His son Kavin’s SoftBank-backed Hike, once considered a rising unicorn, shut down its messaging service and is focusing now on gaming.