Press Trust of India / New York Nov 19, 2009, 11:48 IST
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in India with $32 billion in net worth followed by steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and younger brother Anil Ambani, according to the Forbes annual rich list for the country.
NRI steel baron Mittal has been ranked at the second position with a net worth of $30 billion, while Mukesh's sibling Anil Ambani, whose wealth stood at $17.5 billion was ranked third.
Wipro Chairman Azim Premji and Essar Group's Shashi & Ravi Ruia are ranked fourth and fifth with net worth of $14.9 billion and $13.6 billion, respectively.
The magazine said the combined fortune of India's 100 richest is $276 billion, almost one-fourth of the country's GDP.
"Happier days are here again for India's super rich, thanks to a rebounding stock market, up two-thirds in the past year, and a still buoyant economy that's growing at least 6 per cent a year," the US business magazine said.
The nation is now home to 52 billionaires, up from 27 last year and only two short of what India had at the peak of its stock market boom in 2007.
Overall, the top three billionaries of India are worth $79.5 billion, which is $25.7 billion more than their combined sum a year ago.
However, Forbes said that the amount is "still far shy of their record total of $145 billion in 2007".
India's 100 richest are worth over 100 billion dollars more than the total net worth of 170 billion dollars of their counterparts in China. This is despite China having more billionaires -- 79 as against India's 52.
Besides, the richest Indian has a fortune more than five times the 5.8 billion dollars of China's richest citizen Wang Chuanfu. The list for China was compiled earlier this month. Since the, Chuanfu's wealth has further eroded.
The top-10 Indian billionaires are worth USD 155 billion, a 60 per cent increase over last year and four times that of China's top 10.
Others in the top ten club include-- realtor KP Singh (6th with 13.5 billion dollars), OP Jindal group Chairperson Savitri Jindal (7th with 12 billion dollars), telecon czar Sunil Mittal (8th with 8.2 billion dollars), Birla Group's Kumar Mangalam Birla (9th with 7.8 billion dollars), Adani group head Gautam Adani (10th with 6.4 billion dollars).
Forbes said the latest list reinforces the belief that India has scale and potential to produce billionaires faster than most of the countries on earth, if conditions in financial markets and economy were right.
It further noted that there was clear evidence about enterpreneurial capitalism "alive and kicking" in the country and the wealth creation was a broad-based phenomenon here.
However, there are only six women among the 100 richest and the wealthiest among them is Savitri Jindal.
The richest newcomers are two brothers-- Sudhir and Samir Mehta of Torrest Power, who are together ranked 23rd with a net worth of 2.02 billion dollars.
Media business veteran Kalanithi Maran, who heads Sun TV group, is ranked 20th and saw his wealth nearly doubling to 2.3 billion dollars.
Forbes said that a recovering real estate market was one of the biggest sources of wealth, as many as 14 from this scetor made it in the top-100 list. While 13 tycoons earned their net worth in pharmaceutical industry. These included Cyrus Poonawala and Biocon's Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the country's richest self-made woman.
The IT sector also produced some of the richest in the country -- including Wipro's Azim Premji (4th), HCL group's Shiv Nadar (ranked 15th) and as many as five from Infosys alone.
Forbes said that Indian business tycoons did not go on a global hunt to expand their empires this year, unlike past two years, with an exception of Sunil Mittal who also failed in his endeavour to strike a mega-merger deal with South African telecom giant MTN.
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