India has the third-highest number of billionaires in the world after the US and China, according to recent data released by Forbes magazine. With 140 billionaires in 2021, India has gone past Germany (having 136 billionaires) to claim the third spot in countries with the most billionaires in 2021. India’s top three richest people have added over $100 billion between them. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani reclaimed the top spot in the Forbes list of India's 10 richest billionaires with a net worth of $84.5 billion. Ambani was followed by Adani Group chief Gautam Adani and HCL founder Shiv Nadar. Put together, the three richest Indians added just over $100 billion, as per Forbes. Forbes also said that the total number of Indian billionaires rose to 140 this year from 102 last year and their combined wealth nearly doubled to $596 billion.
1. Mukesh Ambani:Ambani chairs and runs $88 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 the 4G phone service Jio.Net worth: $88.7 billion
2. Gautam Adani: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.Net worth: $25.2 billion
3. Shiv Nadar: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, 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.Net worth: $20.4 billion
4. Radhakishan Damani: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 Cement.Net Worth: $15.4 billion
5. Hinduja Brothers:Four siblings, Srichand, Gopichand (pictured), Prakash and Ashok, control multinational conglomerate the Hinduja Group. Their group's businesses range from trucks and lubricants to banking and cable television. The brothers own valuable real estate in London, including the historic Old War Office building in Whitehall, which will house a Raffles Hotel. Srichand and Gopichand live in London and Prakash resides in Monaco while the youngest sibling Ashok oversees their Indian interests from Mumbai.Net worth: $12.8 billion
6. Cyrus Poonawalla: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 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. The serum has multiple Covid-19 vaccine partnerships and has launched Covishield, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.Net Worth: $11.5 billion
7. Pallonji Mistry:Reclusive tycoon Pallonji Mistry controls Mumbai-headquartered engineering and construction giant, the 155-year-old Shapoorji Pallonji Group. The S.P. Group, run by Mistry's older son Shapoor, also owns Eureka Forbes, the country's leading brand of water purifiers. The family's biggest asset is an 18.4% stake in Tata Sons, holding outfit of the $113 billion (revenue) Tata Group, a conglomerate of 30 companies. After Mistry's younger son Cyrus was ousted as chairman of Tata Sons in October 2016, the two families have been at loggerheads.Net worth: $11.4 billion
8. Uday Kotak:Spurning his family's trading business, Uday Kotak started a finance firm in 1985 then went on to 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.Net worth: $11.3 billion
9. Godrej Family:The Godrej family controls the $6 billion (revenue) Godrej Group, a 123-year-old consumer-goods giant. The group was established by lawyer Ardeshir Godrej, who gave up his profession to make locks in 1897. Today the group is chaired by patriarch Adi Godrej (pictured), an MIT grad, who took charge as chairman in 2000. Key group companies include Godrej Consumer Products, chaired by Adi Godrej's daughter Nisaba and Godrej Properties, run by his son Pirojsha.Net worth: $11 billion
10. Lakshmi Mittal: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.Net worth: $10.3 billion
