Premji, Nadar among world's 20 richest in infotech: Forbes

Wipro chairman Azim Premji and HCL founder Shiv Nadar were the only Indians on the inaugural list of 20 richest people in the world of technology put out by Forbes. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world's richest man, ranked number one, with a net worth of $79.6 billion, while Premji ranked 13th and Nadar 14th.

Number two on the list was Larry Ellison, with a net worth estimated at $50 billion even as revenues for Oracle in the year that ended in May, were down slightly from the previous year to $38.2 billion, Forbes said. Ellison ceded the CEO spot at Oracle last year to two co-CEOs, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, but still serves as chairman and chief technology officer.

The third-richest on the list is Jeff Bezos, whose net worth shot up dramatically in July after Amazon.com reported a rare profit for its second quarter.

The list has Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, ranked fourth, followed by Google co-founder Larry Page, Alibaba chief Jack Ma, ranked seventh, Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt (20), Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (35) and Square CEO Jack Dorsey (92). In total, the world's 100 richest tech billionaires are worth $842.9 billion.

Two Indian-origin tech czars, Romesh Wadhwani and Bharat Desai, were also on the list.

Forbes said Premji, 70, who has a net worth of $17.4 billion, was among Asia's most generous tycoons, having given away more than $4 billion of his fortune.

Nadar, with a net worth of $14.4 billion, gets the bulk of his wealth from software services outfit, HCL Technologies.

Wadhwani is ranked 73rd on the list with a $2.8 billion net worth. The 67-year-old IIT-alumnus is chief executive officer and chairman of Symphony Technology Group, a collection of 20 companies spanning big data, analytics and software, with combined annual revenues of $3 billion. In July 2015, he announced plans to commit $1 billion to the Wadhwani Foundations to fund entrepreneurship in India; he did not provide a timetable for the funding.

Desai and family were ranked 82nd with a net worth of $2.5 billion. The 62-year-old and wife Neerja founded infortmation technology consulting and outsourcing company Syntel in 1980, out of their apartment in Michigan.

American billionaires occupied 51 slots. Thirty-three tech barons from Asia were featured on the list. Eight people from Europe made the cut - a minimum net worth of $2 billion - as did two from West Asia and one from Latin America. Forty of the 100 live in California.

The list has only seven women, the wealthiest of whom is Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple's late chief, Steve Jobs, with an estimated net worth of $21.4 billion.

The average age of the group is 53, a decade younger than the average age of all billionaires; 15 of the 100 are under the age of 40.