Ambani, Adani get richer despite Covid-19 crisis

Mumbai: Forty Indians entered the billionaires' club in the pandemic-stricken 2020 to take the number of those in the coveted list to 177 people, a report said on Tuesday. Mukesh Ambani continued to be the wealthiest Indian with a networth of $83 billion.

The head of Reliance Industries witnessed a 24 per cent jump in fortunes and climbed up one spot to be the eighth richest globally, as per the Hurun Global Rich List.

Gautam Adani from Gujarat, who has had a spectacular rise in fortunes in the last few years, saw his wealth almost doubling to $32 billion in 2020 and climbed 20 places to be the 48th richest person globally and the second wealthiest Indian. His brother Vinod's wealth grew 128 per cent to $9.8 billion.

The report compiles individual or family wealth in the year to January 15. It can be noted that the Indian economy is set to contract by over 7 per cent because of the impact of the pandemic, which had forced governments to go for lockdowns that had a debilitating impact on the poor.

The report comes at a time when concerns are being raised about a 'K-shaped' recovery being underway, where a select few prosper. Hurun India's Managing Director and Chief Researcher Anas Rahman Junaid said Indian wealth creation is dominated by cyclical or traditional industries compared to tech-driven wealth creation in the US and China.

"When the tech-driven wealth creation reaches full potential, India could potentially beat USA in terms of the number of billionaires," he added.

IT company HCL's Shiv Nadar was the third wealthiest Indian with a fortune of $27 billion while some peers in the tech industry dominated the list of fastest growing wealth.

Jay Chaudhry of software company Zcaler saw a 274 per cent rise in networth to $13 billion during the year while Byju Raveendran and family saw a 100 per cent increase in its wealth to $2.8 billion, the report said. Diversified corporate house Mahindra Group's head Anand Mahindra and family also saw a 100 per cent increase in wealth to $2.4 billion, it said.

Among those who saw a decline in their networth during the year was Acharya Balkrishna of Patanjali Ayurved at $3.6 billion, down 32 per cent. The financial capital continues to lead in the country from a concentration perspective, being home to 60 of the 177 Indian billionaires, followed by New Delhi at 40 and Bengaluru at 22 billionaires, it said.

From a gender perspective, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon leads with a networth of $4.8 billion (up 41 per cent), Smita V Crishna of Godrej at $4.7 billion and Lupin's Manju Gupta at $3.3 billion.

A majority of 118 billionaires were classified as self-made ones in the ranking, as against 932 of the 1,058 billionaires in neighbouring China, which is home to the highest number of billionaires.

Globally, the list is led by Elon Musk of Tesla with a fortune of $197 billion followed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos at $189 billion and Frenchman Bernard Arnault of fashion house LVMH at $114 billion.