Eternal's Goyal tops Hurun India's 2025 self-made entrepreneurs list

Deepinder Goyal ranks first on the Hurun-IDFC FIRST Top 200 list of self-made entrepreneurs of the millennia, as newer consumer-focused ventures reshape India's wealth hierarchy

Deepinder Goyal of Eternal has topped the IDFC FIRST Private Banking-Hurun India Top-200 Self-made Entrepreneurs of the Millennia 2025 list with a valuation of ₹3.2 trillion, up 27 per cent from last year.

 

Radhakishan Damani of Avenue Supermarts, last year’s leader, slipped to second place with a valuation of ₹3 trillion, down 13 per cent year-on-year. Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal of InterGlobe Aviation debuted at third place with a company valuation of ₹2.2 trillion. 

The list featured self-made Indian entrepreneurs who created the most valuable companies of the millennia, post 2000. 

The combined value of all companies on the list stood at ₹42 trillion, up 15 per cent year-on-year, with entrepreneurs from 51 cities. Bengaluru led with 88 entrepreneurs, followed by Mumbai (83) and New Delhi (52), together accounting for more than half the list.

   

Collectively, these companies paid ₹8,030 crore in direct taxes, up from ₹4,570 crore last year, and employed around 800,000 people, roughly equal to the population of Fiji.

 

The average age of founders on the list is 48. According to the fiscal year 2025 numbers, the most profitable companies from the list were InterGlobe Aviation (₹7,258 crore), Avenue Supermarts (₹2,707 crore) and Groww (₹1,824 crore), while the highest spenders on employee benefits were InterGlobe Aviation (₹7,473 crore), Paytm (₹3,288 crore) and Eternal (₹2,558 crore).

 

The trailblazers

• Financial services lead the list with 47 companies, followed by software & services (28), healthcare (27) and retail (20)
• 189 companies, accounting for nearly 95% of the list, have external investors, while the remaining firms are bootstrapped
• Razorpay and Zerodha have dropped out of the Top 10, reflecting a shift in India’s entrepreneurial hierarchy towards newer consumer-focused ventures
• The entrepreneurs on the list together command a total business value equivalent to a quarter of the value of India’s 300 most valuable family businesses, despite being founded within the last 25 years, compared to the family businesses’ average age of 73 years
• Five companies are valued ₹ 1 trillion or more, up from three last year
• Twenty women entrepreneurs feature on the list, with a combined company value of ₹3.3 trillion, led by Falguni Nayar and Adwaita Nayar of Nykaa (₹67,500 crore)
• The youngest woman entrepreneur is Adwaita Nayar (34) of Nykaa, while the youngest founders overall are Kaivalya Vohra (22) and Aadit Palicha (23) of Zepto, valued at ₹52,400 crore
• Avenue Supermarts is the largest employer with 90,280 employees, followed by InterGlobe Aviation (42,887) and Jana Small Finance Bank (25,381)
• The highest-revenue companies are InterGlobe Aviation (₹84,098 crore), Avenue Supermarts (₹59,482 crore) and Eternal (₹21,320 crore)