The collective wealth of India's 100 richest tycoons surpassed the trillion-dollar milestone for the first time as more than 80 percent of the country's richest tycoons are now wealthier than they were a year ago, a Forbes report showed on Thursday. In a record-breaking year, India's wealthiest are now worth $1.1 trillion, more than twice as rich as they were in 2019, said the Forbes list of India's top 100 billionaires.
The biggest dollar gainer is infrastructure magnate Gautam Adani, who posted a strong recovery from last year's short-selling attack and recently placed his sons and nephews in key positions, the report noted. With his brother Vinod (Adani), he added $48 billion to take the family's net worth to $116 billion, enough to retain the No. 2 position, it added.
In fact, India's richest added $316 billion or almost 40 per cent in merely the last 12 months, as investor appetite about the country's growth story remains strong under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term, says the report.
Savitri Jindal, the matriarch of steel-to-power conglomerate OP Jindal Group, whose son Sajjan Jindal recently made an ambitious foray into electric vehicles with MG Motor, moved up to No. 3 for the first time. She's one of nine women on the list, up from eight a year ago, the report revealed.
Mahima Datla, chief of private vaccine manufacturer Biological E, is among four debutants on the list at Forbes. Others who make it to this coveted list include B Partha Saradhi Reddy, founder of Hetero Labs making generic medicines and pharma ingredients; Harish Ahuja, head of apparel maker Shahi Exports; and Surender Saluja, founder and chairman of Premier Energies, which makes solar panels and modules.
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries founder Dilip Shanghvi jumped three spots to fifth position with $32.4 billion, while siblings Sudhir and Samir Mehta of Torrent Group nearly more than doubled their wealth to $16.3 billion. The Godrej family has Brothers Adi and Nadir Godrej, who control listed companies under the Godrej Industries Group, and their cousins Jamshyd Godrej and Smita Crishna Godrej, who control privately held flagship Godrej & Boyce under the Godrej Enterprises Group.
Nikhil Kamath, 38, Co-Founder and MD of online brokerage Zerodha with his brother Nithin, 45, is one of the six nonagenarians on the list.
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