Gautam Adani To Cyrus Poonawala — The Rise And Rise Of Indian Billionaires In Last 10 Years

As India is becoming a new potential economic superpower in the world, the country is producing more billionaires than any other nations. India has very recently overtaken the United Kingdom as the world’s fifth-largest economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on On September 2 announced that India had surged past the UK to become the fifth-largest economy in the world.

By 2030, according to economists, India, a country with nearly 140 crore people, will inch closer to becoming the third-largest economy, just behind the US and China.

In the post-Covid era, India is growing at a pace of about 7.7 per cent in terms of real GDP growth. However, the economic momentum may dampen because of high inflation, uneven monsoons, and slowing global growth. Rating agencies have also lowered India's growth prospect amid rising risks of global recession in 2023. Whatever may be the issues revolving around the Indian economy, the pace of producing Indian billionaires in the past one decade hasn’t slackened.

According to the Forbes Billionaires List for the year 2022, as many as 18 Indian billionaires made it onto the world's top 500 billionaires list. Among the 2,668 richest people on the planet, India has 166 billionaires, which makes the country third on the list after the US and China.

Billionaire Gautam Adani has now become the world's second richest man, replacing French billionaire Bernard Arnault by a whisker on the Forbes list.

Forbes rich list shows that the Adani Group chairman’s net worth now stands at $155.5 billion (Rs 12.37 lakh crore). Adani's net worth rose by $5.2 billion, a hike of 3.49 per cent. He is narrowly ahead of French tycoon Bernard Arnault and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Tesla founder Elon Musk continues to occupy the top position in the rich list.

The second Indian billionaire who is well placed on the top-10 list is Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani.

Ambani’s net worth as recorded by Forbes is $92.2 billion. Apart from Ambani, the other billionaires in the top ten list include Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.

On August 30, Gautam Adani had surpassed Louis Vitton boss Arnault to become the world’s third richest man. It was the first instance when an Asian was ranked among the top three billionaires.

The rise of Gautam Adani has been extraordinary. By becoming the second richest man in the world, Adani’s meteoric rise is no mean feat, as no Indian or Asian has ever achieved that.

According to Forbes, Adani’s wealth on Friday stood at $152.6 billion. There has been a phenomenal growth of his wealth. Adani’s wealth was less than $10 billion when Covid-19 first became a global phenomenon in March 2020. From there, he gained wealth massively as his business expanded in almost all directions.

Meteoric Rise of Gautam Adani

Infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani controls Mundra Port, India's largest, in his home state of Gujarat. His $13 billion (revenue) Adani Group's interests span infrastructure, commodities, power generation and transmission and real estate.

Adani acquired a 74 per cent stake in Mumbai International Airport, India's second-busiest, in September 2020. He's now the country's biggest airport operator.

Adani wants to be the world's largest producer of green energy and has said he will invest upto $70 billion on renewable energy projects.

In May 2022, he made a big entry into cement when he won the race to acquire Swiss giant Holcim's cement business in India for $10.5 billion.

According to news reports, Adani Group on Friday surpassed Tata Group in terms of market capitalisation race. The combined market cap of Adani Group firms rose to Rs 21.14 lakh crore against the Rs 21.04 lakh crore market cap of Tata Group.

Looking Ahead: India@2047

Mukesh Ambani’s Wealth

On the other hand, Mukesh Ambani, one of India’s most prolific industrialists, is placed at the 8^th spot on the Forbes list and Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He chairs and runs $104 billion (revenue) Reliance Industries, which has interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom, and retail.

The conglomerate, Reliance, was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer. After his father's death in 2002, Ambani and his younger brother Anil divided up the family empire.

Reliance sparked a telecom price war with the launch of 4G phone and broadband service Jio in 2016. Now, it has more than 42 crore subscribers and is readying to launch 5G services across the country.

He is pivoting Reliance into green energy. The company will be investing $80 billion over the next 10-15 years on renewable energy and building a new complex next to its refinery.

In the last AGM of Reliance, Ambani has spelled out his succession plan: son Akash is now chairman of Reliance Jio, daughter Isha oversees retail business, while younger son Anant has been inducted into the new energy business.

However, after Adani and Ambani, there’s a long gap in between as vaccine-maker Cyrus Poonawala comes third as he is placed on the 64^th spot on the Forbes list.

Other Indian Billionaires

Poonawalla founded Serum Institute of India in 1966 and built it into the world's largest vaccine maker (by doses). It produces over 150 crore doses annually of a range of vaccines, including for measles, polio and flu.

Under his son Adar, Serum’s CEO, the company invested $800 million to build a new factory to make Covid-19 vaccines. Serum has multiple Covid-19 vaccine partnerships and produces Covishield, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.  

However, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Poonawala is placed below the 100^th spot.

The other notable industrialists who made it to the top-100 of the rich list are Shiv Nadar, chairman of HCL Technologies, Radhakishan Damani, founder of DMart, and Savitri Jindal, widow of founder Om Prakash Jindal. Savitri Jindal chairs Jindal Group, whose interests include steel, power, cement, and infrastructure.

Kumar Birla, who is also known as the commodities king, heads the $45 billion Aditya Birla Group. The group's interests span cement and aluminium to telecom and financial services.

According to Forbes, over 60 Indian companies raised a whopping $15.6 billion through initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2021.

Of them is Nykaa CEO Falguni Nayar, who became India’s richest self-made woman after the shares of her company were listed on the stock exchanges.

Other prominent names on the rich list were Uday Kotak, Dilip Shanghvi, Laxmi Mittal, and Azim Premzi.