| Wealth up 74% to Rs 6.33 lakh cr in a year; Mukesh Ambani tops list.
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| The collective net worth of India’s billionaires (those with assets of more than Rs 1 billion, or Rs 100 crore) has gone up by an unprecedented 74 per cent to Rs 6,33,457 crore, from Rs 3,64,000 crore last year.
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| Membership of the Billionaire Club has also swelled, with 89 new businessmen crossing the billion rupee threshold, taking the total membership of the club to 391. There were only 99 people in the club when this listing began in 1999.
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| Business Standard’s annual magazine, The Billionaire Club (issued free with this copy of the newspaper) ranks the wealth of India’s billionaires.
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| The wealth is computed on the basis of the market value of direct holdings in listed companies and any share in cross-holding, with the valuation being done at the end of August 2006.
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| Of the 89 new billionaires this year, no fewer than 45 people have qualified by riding on the 4,000-point surge in the Sensex over the past year, while 35 new members are there by virtue of taking their companies public in the last 12 months.
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| Behind both events lie not just stock market swings but also solid work put in by the billionaires to add value to their companies.
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| Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the country’s richest billionaire this year, replacing Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, who comes in second.
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| Ambani’s personal wealth was Rs 76,509 crore, based on stock prices at the end of August. Premji is a distant second with Rs 59,557 crore.
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| Mukesh Ambani’s wealth has gone up by two-thirds in the last one year, partly because of restructuring in the wake of the split with his brother and fresh stock market listing. His younger brother Anil Ambani comes in fifth on the list with a wealth of Rs 23,721 crore, but has done better in terms of percentage increase in wealth — 140 per cent. Between them, the Ambani brothers now have marginally more than Rs 100,000 crore of wealth.
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| Bharti Airtel Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Bharti Mittal comes third in the list (Rs 35,034 crore), followed by Anil Agarwal of Sterlite Industries (Rs 31,902 crore).
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| Tulsi R Tanti of Suzlon Energy is like Anil Ambani, a new entrant in the billionaires list, and ranking up there in the sixth position.
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| He is followed by Unitech Chairman Ramesh Chandra, who has jumped from 114th position in 2005 to the seventh slot this year, with Rs 12,671 crore of wealth, courtesy a steep 2,100 per cent increase in Unitech’s stock price over the last one year.
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| Kumar Mangalam Birla, Dilip Shanghvi and Shiv Nadar are the other three billionaires in the top ten.
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| There are now 23 Indians with wealth of over Rs 4,500 crore, making them dollar billionaires. In 1999, there were only three dollar billionaires in the country.
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| The extraordinarily optimistic message that the list of 391 billionaires throws up is a simple one — with the opening up of the Indian economy, there has been no shortage of business opportunities, and entrepreneurs have grabbed their chances with both hands.
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| It is no wonder that over two-thirds of the promoters, who are now members of the Billionaire Club, are from small and medium firms. They added over Rs 1,89,800 crore to their wealth last year, taking their aggregate to Rs 2,41,000 crore.
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| Which are the sectors that generate the greatest wealth at the top? While many of India’s richest moguls continue to be from software and other service sectors (a total of 44 billionaires this year), pharmaceuticals, steel, automobiles and diversified businesses have spawned a large number of billionaires too.
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| But this is not just a story about winners, for there are also those who saw their wealth shrink, especially if their companies hit an air pocket. Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal is the most prominent among the losers.
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| The promoter of India’s largest airline, who listed Jet last year to become the wealthiest new billionaire, has lost about Rs 4,500 crore on account of the Jet-Sahara episode and the downturn in airline fortunes.
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| The other major losers in what has been a bull market are the promoters of Ranbaxy, who lost Rs 1,560 crore, and Habil Khorakiwala of Wockhardt, who lost Rs 1,066 crore.
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| The Billionaire Club magazine also focuses on the highest-paid executives in corporate India, the cut-off being a minimum annual salary of Rs 1 crore. The noteworthy feature here is that salaries at the top have been going up faster (22 per cent) than the average increase in companies' salaries.
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| Click here for Billionaire Club |
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