The world financial scene saw intense upheavals, mostly precipitated by the tariffs war led by President Donald Trump. This uncertainty had a cascading effect on India's stock exchanges, which dipped after a record-breaking rally in the past year. Despite all these setbacks, though, India was able to post a new record, creating 205 billionaires in Forbes' 2025 list of the World's Billionaires, up from 200 in the last year. A depreciating rupee also added to the problem, causing a marginal decline in their overall wealth, which currently is at $941 billion, down from $954 billion in 2024. The combined wealth of the top ten richest individuals in the nation is nearly $337 billion, or $56 billion less than a year ago. Much of this fall is attributed to the wealth depletion of the two richest Indians, who lost $51 billion together. Mukesh Ambani, though seeing his net fortune drop by 20% to $92.5 billion, remains India's richest person as well as Asia's wealthiest individual. However, he is no longer a centibillionaire. Reliance Industries, his business conglomerate, underperformed the market as a whole, with stock falling 15% from last year's ranking. That was down primarily due to narrower profit margins in the oil refining and petrochemical units, as well as more competition in the retailing unit—a segment he plans to list in the future. A number of newcomers made the billionaires' list this year. They include dynamic Ola Cabs founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, who went public with his EV business, Ola Electric, last August. Biological E vaccine manufacturer's key person Mahima Datla also featured on the list, with a controlling shareholding in the business. Entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, the ex-head of Walt Disney in India, also made the list after funneling the returns from his Disney exit into edtech. Moreover, Harish Ahuja, who heads garments behemoth Shahi Exports, which was started by his mother and supplies global brands such as H&M and Calvin Klein, also earned a spot. This year also witnessed three individuals returning after having earlier fallen off the list. One of them is Satish Mehta, founder of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, who was able to take his company public last July. But market volatility saw fourteen people being left out of the billionaire list, such as Pradeep Rathod, chairman and managing director of Cello World, a brand familiar in every Indian household as a supplier of plastic products from storage boxes to molded chairs. Now, let’s delve into the list of the top 10 Indian billionaires.
10. Kushal Pal Singh ($14.5 Billion)
Kushal Pal Singh, also identified as the "Father of Indian Real Estate" or the leader of Indian Real Estate, was born on 15 August 1931 and has been a forerunner and leader of real estate and urban development. Singh, following a successful corporate career in the Indian Army, developed leadership and the corporate discipline that has underpinned his business acumen. Singh moved to DLF Limited, where he utilized these skills to reshape urban aspirations in India, in particular at DLF limited. Singh planned and incredibly built DLF into a real estate empire, constructing high-quality residential and commercial-new generation infrastructure and a new urbanism. Singh's vision and tenacity established Gurgaon as a world-class international economic centre. Singh's experience and ambition had a major impact not only on his family but also on the Indian real estate industry.
9. Radhakishan Damani ($15.4 Billion)
The universe always bows down to a stubborn heart, just like it did for Radhakishan Damani. The man is a successful investor and entrepreneur. Radhakishan Damani is a Mumbai- based billionaire, who owns India’s third-largest mega-retail stores chain, viz., “DMart”. A humble trader of Mumbai is now the ruler of “Dalal Street”.Born and brought up in a Marwari family, Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani belonged to a simple family in Mumbai and resided in a single-room apartment in the city in his initial years. His father worked on Dalal Street. After the demise of Damani’s father, he went on to become a stock market broker and investor, leaving his ball-bearing business once and for all.When the Harshad Mehta scam came to light in 1992, Damani saw a great rise in his income, all because of the short-selling profits. A major turning point came in his life when he quit the stock market in 2020, just a year after Apna Bazaar. That’s when he started DMart, Damani’s own hypermarket chain. DMart is one of his most passionate projects.
8. Lakshmi Mittal ($19.2 Billion)
Lakshmi Mittal (born 15 June 1950 in Sadulpur, Rajasthan, India) is an Indian businessman and former CEO (2006–21) of ArcelorMittal, the largest steel-making company in the world. In the 1960s, Mittal's family moved to Calcutta (Kolkata), where his father owned a steelworks. While attending St. Xavier's College to study science, Mittal worked at the steelworks. Mittal pursued consolidation in a steel industry that had become weak and fragmented. Although steel demand remained high, smaller steel manufacturers had difficulty negotiating competitive prices with major customers, particularly automobile makers and manufacturers of appliances. However, Mittal's company controlled around 40 percent of the American "flat-rolled" steel market used for automobiles, allowing this giant steelmaker to secure better pricing. In 2004, Mittal combined his companies, Ispat International and LNM Holdings, and he purchased Ohio-based International Steel Group. Upon the merger, Mittal Steel Company NV was formed and became the largest steel maker in the world.
7. Kumar Birla ($20.9 Billion)
Kumar Mangalam Birla (born June 14, 1967) is an Indian business magnate, who was born in Kolkata and grew up in Mumbai in a joint family with his parents Aditya Vikram Birla and Rajashree Birla and his younger sister Vasavadatta Birla. Birla is the chairman of Aditya Birla Group, a company and conglomerate founded by the Birla family that has about one-third of the largest cement maker in India, Grasim Industries. The Mumbai-based Aditya Birla Group has a stake in Hindalco Industries, an aluminum company, and Aditya Birla Capital, a financial services provider, as well as an investment in the iron ore miner Essel. He was also chairman of the Board of Trade under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, convener of the Prime Minister's Task Force on Administrative and Legal Simplifications, and was a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Trade and Industry.
6. Cyrus Poonawalla ($23.1 Billion)
Cyrus S. Poonawalla (1941) is an Indian billionaire businessman and the chairman and managing director of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group. His group includes the Serum Institute of India, the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, and Poonawalla Fincorp, a leading non-banking financial company in India.Poonawalla is a Parsi (Zoroastrian) and the son of the famous horse breeder Soli Poonawalla. He founded the Serum Institute of India in 1966 and has established the company as the largest vaccine producer by volume in the world, producing more than 1.5 billion doses annually of vaccines for measles, polio, and influenza.In May 2019, Poonawalla and Naum Koen partnered to donate 100,000 doses of measles vaccine to Ukraine to assist in free immunization efforts. His contributions to the health profession have been widely reported.In 2022, according to the Forbes India Rich List, he was worth $24.3 billion, the fourth richest person in India. Additionally, he was named on the Hurun Global Healthcare Rich List.
5. Dilip Shanghvi ($24.9 Billion)
Dilip Shanghvi is an Indian billionaire born on 1 October 1955, and is the founder of Sun Pharmaceuticals, one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. He received the Padma Shri award in 2016 from the Government of India for his contributions. He is often misidentified as Jain, he belongs to a Gujarati Hindu Vaishnav Kapol Vania family who originally lived in Kolkata. He experienced his first exposure to the pharmacy business in his dad's wholesale medicine operations which were primarily generics. In 2014, Sun Pharmaceuticals made a key move, when Sun Pharma entered into an agreement with Ranbaxy and Daiichi Sankyo (the majority owner) to purchase all remaining Ranbaxy shares and take over - with a $3.2 billion purchase - approximately $800 million of outstanding debt, Sun Pharma was now in the hands of Sun Pharmaceuticals. In March 2015, the acquisition filled a top management position, had catapulted Sun Pharmaceuticals into first position in the Pharmaceuticals industry in India and number five in the world. In May 2021, Shanghvi resigned as Managing Director of Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company (SPARC) but remains a non executive director and chairman providing overall direction to the company.
4. Shiv Nadar ($34.5 Billion)
Shiv Nadar, born on July 14, 1945, is an accomplished Indian billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of HCL Technologies, and heads the Shiv Nadar Foundation. Nadar established HCL in 1976, and has been instrumental in the development of the company from being an IT hardware producer into a global technology company over thirty years. Nadar was born into a Tamil Hindu family, in the village of Moolaipozhi, which was then part of the Madras Presidency (now Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu). He attended Town Higher Secondary School in Kumbakonam, then later at Elango Corporation Higher Secondary School in Madurai. For his considerable contributions to the growth of the Indian IT industry, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2008. His colleagues refer to him affectionately as "Magus" (an Old Persain word for "wizard"). He has been focused on improving India's education system through the Shiv Nadar Foundation, since the mid-1990s.As of March 26, 2025 Forbes assessed his net worth is $36.5 billion, making him one of the wealthiest persons in the world.
3. Savitri Jindal ($35.5 Billion)
Savitri Devi Jindal (born March 20, 1950) is an Indian businesswoman and politician notable for being chairperson emeritus of the O.P. Jindal Group, a large steel and power company started by her late husband, Om Prakash Jindal, who she married in the 1970s.Jindal hails from Tinsukia, Assam, and was born into a Hindu Marwari family. She has been active in politics, having been a minister in the Haryana government and a member of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha for the Hisar constituency, losing the seat in the 2014 state elections. Outside of politics and business, she is the president of Maharaja Agrasen Medical College in Agroha.As of June 2024, the Jindal family’s net worth was estimated to be $40 billion, and in October 2024, Forbes ranked her and her family the third richest among India's 100 tycoons, valued at $34.4 billion.In advance of the 2024 Indian general election, Jindal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Her son, Naveen Jindal, ran for and won the Kurukshetra parliamentary seat on a BJP ticket, and she ran and won, independently, from Hisar in the October 2024 Haryana State Assembly elections.
2. Gautam Adani ($56.3 Billion)
Gautam Shantilal Adani, born on June 24, 1962, is an Indian industrialist and billionaire who is the founder and current chairman of the Adani Group, a multinational conglomerate with an emphasis on port operation and infrastructure development and operation in India. On January 17, 2025 he was ranked as the second richest man in Asia and the 25th richest in the world with a fortune of $60.4 billion. He has received numerous honors, including a 2022 Time Magazine honor as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In a previous life, in 1978, as a teenager he moved to Mumbai and worked as a diamond sorter for Mahendra Brothers. He moved to Ahmedabad in 1981 and worked with his older brother in the plastic goods business, and was exposed international trade. He brought in polyvinyl chloride (PVC). In 2025 Gautam Adani, along with his wife Priti Adani and family, visited the Maha Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj where the Adani Group officially announced a tie-up with ISKCON to begin the Mahaprasad Seva program to distribute free meals to all the devotees attending the Maha Kumbh Mela from January 13, 2025 to February 26, 2025.
1. Mukesh Ambani ($92.5. Billion)
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani (born 19 April 1957) is a billionaire businessman from India and is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. According to Forbes' list of India's 100 Richest Tycoons, Ambani is the richest person in Asia and the 9th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $119.5 billion, as of October. Ambani was born to a Gujarati Hindu family in the then British Crown Colony of Aden (present-day Yemen). He is the brother of Anil Ambani and he has two sisters, Nina Bhadrashyam Kothari and Dipti Dattaraj Salgaonkar. In addition to his role at Reliance, Mukesh Ambani is active in sports in India. He owns the Mumbai Indians franchise in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and is the founder of the Indian Super League (ISL), which is India's top level professional football league.
