Top 10 Indian Billionaires

Top 10 Indian Billionaires

Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani once again tops the list of 84 Indian billionaires in the Forbes annual ranking of the world’s billionaires for 2016 announced on Tuesday. The 84 Indians to make it to the coveted Billionaires club include tycoons from diverse sectors ranging from real estate to auto to consumer goods and pharma.

Ambani, with a net worth of $19.3 billion, is ranked 36 worldwide and retained his position as India’s richest person.

The top 10 Indian billionaires

Ambani is followed by Indian pharma magnate Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharmaceuticals, with a net worth of $16.9 billion, who ranked number 2 among Indian billionaires.

In fact, the pharma sector dominates the list with 20 pharma billionaires. The list includes three pharma newcomers—Leena Tewari (ranked 54 with a net worth of $1.9 billion) of USV; Mannalal Agrawal (ranked 84 with a net worth of $1.35 billion) of Ajanta Pharma; and Chirayu Amin (ranked 93, with a net worth of $1.22 billion) of Alembic Pharma.

The next two spots are taken by tech tycoons Azim Premji and Shiv Nadar. Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd, has a net worth of $15 billion and is third richest Indian billionaire. Premji is a philanthropist who has pledged nearly half of his stakeholding in Wipro to a charitable trust and has reportedly said that rich Indians must give away their wealth and not leave it for the next generation.

Shiv Nadar, co-founder of HCL Group, is the fourth Indian billionaire, with a net worth of $11.1. billion. Nadar’s newest venture is HCL TalentCare, a skills development firm that provides training to new graduates. Besides, he has also set up a $500 million fund with a partner to invest in start-ups and US healthcare tech firms.

At rank 5 is Cyrus Poonawalla, India’s vaccine king with a net worth of $8.5 billion. Poonawalla runs the Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which, according to Forbes, is expected to report record profits of $350 million on revenues of $600 million for the fiscal year ending March 2016. Poonawalla is investing $150 million to expand Serum’s capacity to make a range of new vaccines, including one for dengue

The next five billionaires are steel baron Laxmi Mittal, India’s first self-made billionaire banker Uday Kotak, Kumar Birla of the Aditya Birla group, Bharti Airtel’s Sunil Mittal and pharma company Lupin’s Desh Bandhu Gupta.

Article By:Nandhita Mathur