There are several billionaires from India, some of whom are among the most rich persons on the planet. Indian billionaires, who have a range of industry backgrounds, have made major economic contributions to the country. Wealth will fluctuate due to the volatile market conditions, especially as the majority of billionaires have their fortunes invested in publicly traded companies.
The top 10 Rich Person in India as of 2023 are listed in this most recent list –
1. Gautam Adani
Indian tycoon Gautam Shantilal Adani was born on June 24, 1962. Adani is the chairman and founder of the Adani Group, a multinational business with offices in Ahmedabad that develops and operates ports around India. Additionally, Adani serves as the head of the Adani Foundation, which is mostly run by his wife, Priti Adani.
With a net worth of US$158.3 billion as of September 21, 2022, he is the richest individual in both India and Asia. He is the second-richest person in the world, behind Elon Musk, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and he is also ranked second in Forbes’ real-time billionaire index.
The Adani Group provides funding for the Adani Foundation, which is owned by Adani. It was started back in 1996. The organisation also works in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha in addition to Gujarat.
Through the philanthropic arm of his organisation, he gave 100 crore (about US$13 million) to the PM Cares Fund in March 2020 to combat the coronavirus outbreak. The Gujarat CM Relief Fund received a donation of 5 crore (US$630,000), and the Maharashtra CM Relief Fund received a donation of 1 crore (US$130,000).
From Dammam in Saudi Arabia to Mundra in Gujarat, Adani Group, a diversified corporation led by Adani, imported four ISO cryogenic tanks loaded with 80 metric tonnes of liquid medicinal oxygen. 5,000 oxygen cylinders of a medical quality were also acquired by the group from Linde Saudi Arabia.
Adani stated on Twitter that his organisation delivers 1,500 cylinders of medical oxygen daily to Kutch, Gujarat, wherever it is required. Adani promised to pay Rs 60,000 crore ($7.7 billion) to philanthropic causes in June 2022. The Adani Foundation will manage Adani’s corpus, making this one of the largest donations to a charitable trust in India.
2. Mukesh Ambani
Indian businessman Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani was born on April 19, 1957, and is a billionaire. He is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), the most valuable corporation by market value in India and a Fortune Global 500 firm. Ambani, who is the second richest person in Asia after Gautam Adani and the eighth richest person in the world, is predicted to have a net worth of US$95.7 billion as of September 6, 2022, according to Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Ambani was chosen as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for his leadership in engineering and business in the petrochemical, oil refining, and allied sectors. Jio, led by Ambani, debuted its own line of 4G smartphones in February 2016 under the name LYF. It was the third-highest selling mobile phone brand in India as of June 2016.
Reliance’s shares rose after the service Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, also known as Jio, launched in September 2016. He introduced the Jio Phone at an effective price of zero during the 40th annual general meeting of RIL, along with bonus shares in the ratio of 1:1, which is the largest bonus issue in India.
According to the “Robin Hood Index” published by Bloomberg in February 2018, Ambani’s personal wealth was enough to cover the expenses of the Indian federal government for 20 days.
Ambani revealed a $25 billion plan in August 2022 to introduce 5G mobile internet services within the following two months. By the end of 2023, high-speed internet will be made available throughout the country, starting in key cities like New Delhi and Mumbai.
3. Shiv Nadar
Shiv Nadar is a millionaire industrialist and philanthropist from India who was born on July 14th, 1945. He founded HCL Technologies Limited and the Shiv Nadar Foundation, and he currently serves as their chairman emeritus. Midway through the 1970s, Nadar started HCL. Over the ensuing three decades, he continually shifted the company’s focus in order to transform the IT hardware business into an IT enterprise.
Nadar received the Padma Bhushan in 2008 in recognition of his work in the IT sector. Since the mid-1990s, Nadar, also known by his friends as Magus (Old Persian for “wizard”), has concentrated his efforts on improving India’s educational system through the Shiv Nadar Foundation.
With an estimated net worth of $23.9 billion, He is the third-richest person in India and the 60th-richest person in the world, according to Forbes.
In 1967, Nadar started working for the Walchand Group at Cooper Engineering Ltd. in Pune. He soon abandoned it to start his own business, forming collaborations with a number of acquaintances and coworkers. These partners included Subhash Arora, Yogesh Vaidya, S. Raman, Mahendra Pratap, and DS Puri. Ajai Chowdhry was the former chairman of HCL. Arjun Malhotra was the CEO and chairman of Headstrong.
The first business Nadar and his colleagues started was Microcomp, a business that specialised in the sale of teledigital calculators in the Indian market. With an initial investment of Rs. 187,000, HCL was created in 1976. With the founding of Far East Computers in Singapore in 1980, HCL entered the global market by selling IT gear.
The business continued to focus on the Singapore activities and claimed a Rs 1 million in revenue in the first year. Nadar lost all management control but remained the major stakeholder.
The leadership of his daughter Roshni Nadar, the first woman to chair a publicly traded Indian IT company, was transferred to him in July 2020. In July 2021, Nadar also resigned from his position as managing director of HCL Technologies. C Vijay Kumar, the company’s CEO, took over for a five-year term.
4. Cyrus Poonawalla
A millionaire businessman from India, Cyrus S. Poonawalla was born in 1941. He serves as the chairman and managing director of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group, which includes the Serum Institute of India, the largest maker of vaccines in the world. With a net worth of $24.3 billion, he is rated fourth on Forbes India’s rich list in 2022. According to the Hurun Global Health Care Rich List 2022, he is rated first.
In 1966, Poonawalla established the Serum Institute of India, which he grew into the largest vaccine producer in the world (measured in doses). Serum manufactures roughly 1.5 billion doses of various vaccinations per year, including those for the flu, polio, and measles.
It was revealed in May 2019 that Poonawalla and Naum Koen had suggested giving Ukraine 100,000 doses of the measles vaccine for free inoculation.
5. Radhakishan Damani
The founder of DMart and a multi billionaire businessman from India is Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani. Through his investment company, Bright Star Investments Limited, he also oversees his portfolio. He was the 98th richest person in the world as of August 19, 2021, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
After HDFC Bank went public in 1995, Damani was reputedly the company’s largest individual shareholder. He noticed a significant increase in his income in 1992 as a result of the short-selling gains at the time, which occurred after the Harshad Mehta Scam gained attention. He led a branch of the cooperative department store Apna Bazaar in Nerul in 1999, but he was “unconvinced” by its business philosophy.
In order to launch his own chain of hypermarkets, DMart, he left the stock market in 2000 and opened the first location in Powai in 2002. In 2010, the chain had 25 locations. Since then, the business has swiftly expanded and gone public in 2017.
He currently owns 234 DMart locations across India. Damani maintains a modest profile and conducts few interviews. Additionally, he has instructed Indian billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala in his stock trading methods.
With a net worth of $16.5 billion in 2020, he rose to fourth place among Indian billionaires. On the list of billionaires throughout the world, he came in at number 117. He had a net worth of $18.9 billion and was rated as the 87th richest person in the world by Forbes in 2022.
Damani also owns shares in a variety of businesses, including the cement manufacturer India Cements and the tobacco company VST Industries. Damani purchased 1% of Andhra Paper. In May 2020, Damani acquired a 15% share in India Cements, increasing his ownership of the company to 19.89%. Damani has six publicly traded stocks in his investment portfolio, which will be worth approximately Rs 1,02,077 crore (almost US$13 billion) in 2021.
6. Lakshmi Mittal
On June 15, 1950, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born. She is a British steel tycoon with headquarters in the UK. He holds the positions of Chairman of Aperam, a manufacturer of stainless steel, and Executive Chairman of ArcelorMittal, the largest producer of steel in the world. Mittal owns 38% of ArcelorMittal and 20% of the EFL Championship team Queens Park Rangers.
In 2005, when he was ranked as the third-richest person in the world, Mittal became the first Indian to be included among the top ten on Forbes’ annual list of the world’s richest people. He was ranked sixth in terms of wealth by Forbes in 2011, but by March 2015, he had fallen to position 82.
Since 2008, Mittal has served on the Goldman Sachs board of directors. He is a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists, the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council, the Global CEO Council of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries,[16] the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, and the World Steel Association’s executive committee. He as well serves on the Cleveland Clinic’s board of trustees.
7. Savitri Jindal
Savitri Devi Jindal is an Indian businesswoman and politician who was born on March 20, 1950. She served as the O.P. Jindal Group’s emeritus chairman. She also serves as the college’s president in Agroha, Maharaja Agrasen Medical College.
With a net worth of approximately $4.0 billion, Savitri Jindal is the richest woman in India and the 16th-richest Indian in 2016. She was also the 453rd-richest person in the world in 2016. She is the seventh-richest mother in the world and supports the charitable causes her husband founded. In 2008, the Acharya Tulsi Kartritva Puraskar was awarded to her by the Akhil Bhartiya Terapanth Mahila Mandal.
Jindal was elected to the Haryana Vidhan Sabha in 2005 from the Hissar constituency, which had previously been long-time representative of her late husband Om Prakash Jindal. She was re-elected to the seat in 2009, and on October 29, 2013, the Haryana government named her as a cabinet member.
She had previously held the positions of Minister of State for Urban Local Bodies and Housing as well as Minister of State for Disaster Management, Consolidation, Rehabilitation, and Housing in the previous cabinet.
After she took over, the company’s revenue increased fourfold. She served as a member of the Haryana Legislative Assembly and held the position of Minister of Power till 2010. She is of Haryana heritage. O.P. Jindal, an engineer by trade, founded the O.P. Jindal group in 1952.
It evolved into a conglomerate for mining, oil, gas, steel, and electricity. Her four sons, Prithviraj, Sajjan, Ratan, and Naveen Jindal, are in charge of each of these four corporate sectors. The third-largest manufacturer of steel in India is Jindal Steels.
8. Kumar Mangalam Birla
The chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of India’s major international conglomerates, and a billionaire businessman, Kumar Mangalam Birla was born in India on June 14, 1967. He is also a Chartered Accountant and philanthropist. In addition, he serves as chairman of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science. Forbes estimates that he is worth $17.5 billion in US dollars.
At the age of 28, Birla succeeded his father Aditya Vikram Birla as chairman of the Aditya Birla Group in 1995. The group’s yearly turnover climbed from US$2 billion in 1995 to US$45 billion in 2021 while his chairmanship. Over 50% of the group’s income come from operations abroad, and it is currently operating in 36 countries across six continents.
According to the EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2021, Kumar Mangalam Birla and his family came in fourth place with their charitable contributions, which were primarily made to the healthcare industry. The Aditya Birla Group gave the COVID relief efforts Rs. 500 crores in 2020. This included a $400 billion donation to the PM-CARES fund.
A 15 million pound endowed scholarship programme was established by Kumar Mangalam Birla to support 10 full-time MBA candidates at the London Business School each year. Basant Kumar Birla, Birla’s late grandpa, is honoured by having the BK Birla Scholars Program bear his name. The greatest endowment scholarship gift to a business school in Europe is this programme of scholarships.
BITS Pilani and Birla Mandirs are only two of the schools and temples the Birla family has constructed throughout India.
9. Dilip Shanghvi
One of the richest persons in India and a millionaire businessman, Dilip Shanghvi was born on October 1st, 1955. Sun Pharmaceuticals was started by him. In 2016, the Indian government bestowed upon him the Padma Shri, a civil honour. He was placed eighth on India Today magazine’s list of the country’s most influential persons in 2017.
Shanghvi ranked 14th among Indian billionaires as of October 2021, according to Forbes, with a net worth of US$14.3 billion.
Sanghavi began by assisting his father with his Kolkata-based business, which involved the wholesale distribution of medications, primarily generic medications. He had the idea to start making his own medications rather than reselling those created by others while he was working on this project.
With a capital investment of INR 10,000, the 27-year-old Sanghavi ultimately launched his first manufacturing facility in 1982. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries is the name of his business. The facility, which was close to Mumbai in his home state of Gujarat’s Vapi, produced just one psychiatric medication.
But thanks to Sanghavi’s commercial sense and drive, things quickly took off, and by 1997, Sun Pharma had even managed to buy the American firm Caraco Pharma. In 2007, Sun also purchased Israel’s Taro Pharma. In 2012, Shanghvi appointed Israel Makov, the previous CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, to take over as chairman and CEO.
Managing Director Shanghvi was appointed. Sun, Ranbaxy, and Daiichi Sankyo (the company’s biggest stakeholder) came to an agreement in April 2014 under which Sun would buy all of Ranbaxy’s outstanding shares for $3.2 billion in Sun stock and assume $800 million in Ranbaxy debt.
When the purchase was finalised in March 2015, Sun became the fifth-biggest pharmaceutical firm in the world and the largest in India, while Daiichi became Sun’s second-largest stakeholder.
The 21-member central board committee of the Reserve Bank of India welcomed Shanghvi in January 2018 as a new member. He is the IIT Bombay’s board of governors chairman. In 2017, he was appointed a trustee of Oxford University’s Rhodes scholarship programme.
10. Uday Kotak
Indian billionaire banker Uday Suresh Kotak, who was born on March 15, 1959, serves as the managing director and executive vice chairman of Kotak Mahindra Bank.
When India’s economy was still closed and experiencing slow growth in the early 1980s, Kotak chose to launch his own business instead of accepting a tempting offer from a multinational. He expanded his company during the following few years into a number of financial services sectors, becoming a significant player in bills discounting, stockbroking, investment banking, auto financing, life insurance, and mutual funds.
The Reserve Bank of India granted Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd. a banking licence on March 22, 2003, making it the nation’s first corporate entity to do so.
His wealth was valued at $14.8 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of April 2021. When Goldman Sachs sold Mr. Kotak a 25% ownership in two subsidiaries for $72 million, the two companies’ 14-year association came to an end.
Kotak is a member of the Primary Market Advisory Committee of the Securities & Exchange Board of India, the High Level Committee on Financing Infrastructure of the Indian Government, the Board of Governors of the National Institute of Securities Markets, and ICRIER.
He serves on the Mahindra United World College of India’s Governing Board and the CII National Council. Kotak also sits on the strategic advisory board for Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, a leading national legal practise.
