I just love reading the Hurun Rich List when it comes out every year. Call it wonderment. Call it disbelief. Call it vicarious pleasure. It fascinates me how some towering titans and human dynamos have amassed wealth with more zeroes than I can even count.
The first thing that struck me as I perused through the report was that it has no Bollywood stars featured in it. Which I thought was a bit surprising, if not strange. The only Bollywood mention in the highlights of the report is that of Namit Malhotra, the producer of the recently-released movie Brahmastra, who is ranked 752 on the list with a wealth of Rs 1,700 crore. There is no mention of Aditya Chopra of YRF. No Karan Johar. No Ekta Kapoor. Worse, no Ranveer Singh, no Akshay Kumar. With 40 brand endorsements each at a conservative Rs 5 crore per brand, and reported Rs 100 crore per film pay cheques, each of the latter two has been, I am sure, accumulating enough cash year-on-year to at least make it to the Rich List. And I am also surprised not to see actor-entrepreneur Shah Rukh Khan, who is both a significant owner of Kolkata Knight Riders and promoter of Red Chillies Entertainment. Equally surprisingly, Amitabh Bachchan, with at least a thousand KBC episodes (some say priced at Rs 1 crore each) behind him, not counting his endorsements and movie earnings over the years, is missing.
I was equally puzzled not to see Virat Kohli on the list. He’s been minting his millions for over a decade now. He surely has enough net worth to make the list. I had expected Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni too to be there for sure. But I see no mention of any one of the cricket worthies.
Which leads me to many possibilities, if not conclusions. One possibility is that these august personalities are very much part of the list of 1,103 individuals on the 2022 Rich List with wealth exceeding Rs 1,000 crore but Hurun has chosen not to highlight them. So, we are no wiser. But then why just talk about industrialists and unicorns alone? Sure, the public may be amazed to know about the incredible wealth created by Manyavar promoter Ravi Modi but the fascination around Salman Khan’s riches or Deepika Padukone’s wealth is any day higher. A second possibility is that these Bollywood and cricket personalities are actually not on the list. To me, that sounds bizarre. Improbable.
In any case, let us move onto some other interesting stuff. At age 19, Zepto co-founder Kaivalya Vohra is the youngest to feature on the list of richest Indians. Mr Vohra has fellow co-founder, 20-year-old Aadit Palicha, for company. Vohra ranks 1,036 with a networth of Rs 1,000 crore while Palicha is 950 in the pecking order with Rs 1,200 crore. The duo, computer science dropouts from Stanford, are childhood friends from Dubai and co-founded the grocery delivery app in 2021.
Another interesting set of newly-minted Hurun rich are PhysicsWallah co-founders Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, who both have personal assets of Rs 4,000 crore each and rank at 399. The richie rich gents are both 30 years old.
Thirty seven-years old Neha Narkhede is the youngest self-made women entrepreneur in the list, with estimated wealth of Rs 4,700 crore and rank 336. The Indian-American, is the co-founder of Confluent, a US-based streaming data technology company, though she was born in Pune, and studied there too.
But what I found most interesting in the report is that Cancerians, for the second year running, were the most successful amongst the Rich List with a one-year cumulative wealth increase of 35 per cent. This may well have been largely contributed by star Cancerian Gautam Adani, whose wealth has increased exponentially in past months. Hold it: Mr Adani has Shiv Nadar too in the Cancer Club! That is a set of pretty heavyweights, no?
Virgo richies — Anil Aggarwal, Gopikishan Damani, Shapoor Pallonji Mistry — too did pretty well in terms of wealth increase at 14 per cent. Librans – Dilip Shanghvi, Chandru Raheja and Vivek Chaand Sehgal — were a tad behind at 13 per cent. For those who may not know, Mr Sehgal is Melbourne-based and heads the Samvardhana Motherson group.
Analysing the zodiac sign contribution a bit differently, it is interesting to note that the total contribution to the list by percentage of wealth is almost equal. Scorpios (9.5 per cent), are just a notch better than other zodiacs. Ashwin Dani, Yusuff Ali M A and Sunil Mittal, all Scorpios, seem to have done their bit for the cause. The Leos — Sri Prakash Lohia, Ajay Piramal and Acharya Balkrishna — with 9.3 per cent contribution also beat out the other zodiac signs. I looked for my own sun sign, Sagittarius. Despite heavy weights S P Hinduja, Ravi Jaipuria and Sajjan Jindal, the Sagittarians at 7.4 per cent were amongst the lukewarm contributors.
The writer is managing director of Rediffusion
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
