Cyrus Mistry (left), chairman of Tata Group, speaks with Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, during the launch of ‘Make in India’ campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi yesterday. Ambani has topped the Forbes magazine’s list of the top 100 richest tycoons in India for the eighth consecutive year.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani has topped the Forbes magazine’s list of the top 100 richest tycoons in India for the eighth consecutive year with a net worth of $23.6bn, up $2.6bn from last year.
For the first time, the top 100 richest tycoons in India are all billionaires, according to the latest Forbes rich list. The combined net worth of India’s 100 wealthiest is $346bn, up more than a third from $259bn in 2013.
“In 2014, India’s outlook has moved very quickly from gloom to boom. The new federal government’s mandate for change has sparked euphoria in the stock market causing a seismic shift in Indian wealth this year,” said Naazneen Karmali, India Editor of Forbes Asia.
Dilip Shanghvi, founder of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, India’s most valuable drug maker, is the new No2, overtaking steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, who slips to fifth place. Sun Pharmaceutical’s shares surged after it acquired rival Ranbaxy Laboratories from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo for $4bn in April, Forbes said.
The 59-year old Shanghvi saw his fortune rise by $4.1bn to $18bn. Moving up one notch to No3 is Azim Premji, whose net wealth increased to $16.4bn from $13.8bn previously.
In July, his tech firm Wipro set up a $100mn venture capital fund to back startups led by his son Rishad. The biggest dollar gainer is ports magnate Gautam Adani, who jumped 11 spots to No11 adding nearly $4.5bn to his wealth which reached $7.1bn on soaring shares of his companies.
Adani has been on a buying spree: he bought a port in eastern India from the Tata Group for $900mn and agreed to pay $1bn for a power plant in southern India, Forbes noted.
The top 10 richest in India are:
1) Mukesh Ambani: $23.6bn
2) Dilip Shanghvi: $18bn
3) Azim Premji: $16.4bn
4) Pallonji Mistry: $15.9bn
5) Lakshmi Mittal: $15.8bn
6) Hinduja brothers: $13.3bn
7) Shiv Nadar: $12.5 billion
8) Godrej family: $11.6bn
9) Kumar Birla: $9.2bn
10) Sunil Mittal: $7.8bn