Statsguru: Mukesh Ambani remains at top of Hurun India rich list in 2018

With an estimated wealth of over Rs 3.7 trillion, Mukesh Ambani ranks as the richest Indian for the seventh year in a row on the Barclays Hurun India rich list 2018. As seen in Chart 1, Ambani is followed by the Hinduja and the Mittal families, Azim Premji and Dilip Shanghvi. 

As Indian businesses tend to be disproportionately family-run, it should come as no surprise that more than 50 per cent of Indian businesses listed on the rich list are run by families. As seen in Chart 2, the Ambani family remains the richest Indian family, followed by the Godrej, Hinduja and Mistry families.

With graphite prices rising sharply in the recent past, Krishna Kumar Bangur, who leads Graphite India, has seen a sharp spurt in his wealth. As shown in Chart 3, another Indian who has seen a sharp increase in his wealth is Byju Raveendran, who heads the learning platform Byju’s.

According to the report, 16 per cent of the rich list comprises women, of whom 11 are self-made. As shown in Chart 4, the richest self-made woman in India is Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, followed by Jayshree Ullal and Shradha Agarwal.

While earlier sectors where fortunes were more dependent on government discretion tended to dominate the rich list, sectors like pharmaceuticals now lead the tally, followed by software & services, and FMCG (Chart 5). Further, as shown in Chart 6, pharmaceuticals, along with software and services, also added the most new entrants on the rich list 2018.

Mumbai continues to be home to most of India’s richest, followed by New Delhi and Bengaluru. With 22 new entrants, Ahmedabad overtook Hyderabad to jump to the fourth spot.

StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines.

Source: BARCLAYS HURUN INDIA RICH LIST 2018 

Compiled by BS Research Bureau