India's richest techies take a hit as valuations deflate

Wealth of Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Google India's Kavitark Ram Shriram rose the fastest year-on-year

The latest ranking of India’s richest people showed that there are a few fewer tech billionaires from India than last year. There were 21 tech and software entrepreneurs in Hurun’s India Rich List for 2016. Only six of them were in the dollar billionaires club.

Last year’s list had at least nine billionaires.

As has been the case for years, the superrich list was dominated by people that started India’s successful software and outsourcing industry. Wipro Chairman Azim Premji saw his net worth rise 38 per cent to $11 billion, but his Infosys rivals on the list, cofounders N R Narayana Murthy, S Gopalakrishnan and others saw their estimated values decline.

India’s outsourcers which have long employed relatively inexpensive labour to manage call centers and write code for foreign companies, are rushing to adapt their businesses to meet global clients’ requests for new kinds of digital services. The biggest fall among all the tech giants was for Dhiraj Rajaram of Mu Sigma whose estimated net worth shed more than $2 billion to $375 million, according to Hurun.

India’s top ecommerce entrepreneurs — Flipkart founders Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal — also took a huge hit. Their net worth plummeted 42 per cent, dropping a zero off their net worth. Don’t feel sorry for them though. They are still worth about $800 million each.

Some analysts say the valuations on start-ups around the world are starting to deflate. Last year, three funds with small stakes in Flipkart slashed as much as 23 per cent off the value they gave their holdings in the company.

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma bucked the bubble-bursting trend and saw his net worth balloon almost one and a half times to $1 billion. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and its financial-services affiliate last year agreed to jointly invest about $575 million in India’s One97 Communications, of which Paytm is a unit.

Another big winner, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, who saw his net worth increased 21 per cent to $450 million at the tender age of 30.

Source: The Wall Street Journal