Ambani, Adami and beyond: who are the great billionaires of India
Mukesh Ambani, chairman of the Reliance petrochemical group, has overtaken Gautam Adani in the ranking of India's richest people. Who's on the Economist's list?
This year there has been a sensational changing of the guard at the top of the ranking of the Scrooges of India, with the overtaking of the president of Reliance Industries Limited Mukesh Ambani (98 billion dollars) compared to the founder of the Adani conglomerate, Gautam Adani (58 billion ). Here are all the surprises on the 2023 list compiled by Hurun and commented by the Economist .
Who's at the top?
The list of India's richest riches compiled as always by Hurun with data on those with wealth exceeding 120 million dollars presents many surprises, even if not at the top, where Mukesh Ambani , with a wealth of of 98 billion dollars, which has displaced Gautam Adani from the top, whose wealth amounts to 58 billion.
Top five scrooges of India
Ambani is the chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Limited, a group that mainly operates in refining and petrochemicals.
Adani is instead the founder and president of the group of the same name, which is the third largest industrial conglomerate in India which, with a capitalization of 242 billion dollars, is active in the sectors of port and airport infrastructure, logistics, mining, defense and aerospace.
In third position, with assets of 33.8 billion, is Cyrus Poonawalla , president and general director of the conglomerate of the same name which controls the largest vaccine producer in the world by number of doses, the Serum Institute of India founded in 1966 by Poonawalla himself.
In fourth place, with assets of 27.7 billion, is the pioneer of Indian Information Technology Shiv Nadar , who in 1976 was among the founders of HCL Technologies, one of the country's main software producers.
In fifth position, with 21.4 billion, is Gopichand Hinduja , founder of the empire of the same name controlled by him and his two brothers. In light of his dual citizenship, Hinduja is also the richest British citizen.
What others do
Hurun's 2023 ranking is much larger than last year in light of the entry of 216 new tycoons, bringing the total to 1,319.
The element that stands out is that the source of these riches does not come from traditional businesses such as industry, finance and information technology, but from the sale of consumer goods, materials and healthcare services.
Only one company in the latter sector, the pharmaceutical company Alkem Laboratories, has produced 11 new members of Hurun's list. Also excellent were the performances of Asian Paints (ten new nabobs), Tube Investments of India (8) and Pidilite Industries (7).
The demographic picture of Indian tycoons still sees the over 65s at the top of the list (597), followed closely by the 46-65 year old class (552).
Geographical and sectoral distribution
As for geographical distribution, the rich in India come mainly from Mumbai (328), Dehli (199) and Bangalore (100), which are respectively the commercial, political and technological capital of the country. But 21 capitals have entered the 2023 list, bringing the total of cities where at least one multimillionaire lives to 95.
As the Economis t writes, the riches of the Indian barons derive more from the real economy than from financial engineering, so much so that only one member of the list – Manish Kejriwal, founder of Kedaara Capital – got rich with private equity.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/classifica-ricchi-india/ on Sun, 29 Oct 2023 06:09:29 +0000.