Tech promoters top list of cash recipients

The country's wealthiest promoter families are not necessarily the biggest earners (cash recipients) from their listed companies. Cash receipts include dividends and money received from shares sold/ tendered in buybacks.

Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani is fourth on the list in terms of income earned (dividend) from his company in 2020-21 (FY21). Similarly, Gautam Adani — the country’s second wealthiest family — is ranked 10th in terms of dividend income earned from the group.

In contrast, promoters owning tech firms, cash-rich FMCG and pharma companies top the charts in terms of dividend income.

For example, Wipro’s Azim Premji has received the highest cash in FY21 for the second consecutive year among individual promoters and second overall. The dividend income and value of promoter’s stake is net of crossholding in listed group companies.

It excludes the dividend declared by listed subsidiaries and associates of the group’s main holding and operating companies.

Tata Sons continues to top the cash-rich promoters’ list in the country in the private sector, followed by Azim Premji of Wipro and Anil Agarwal of Vedanta.

The Tata group earned nearly ~23,700 crore by way of equity dividends and cash from share buyback from its listed companies in FY21.

Bulk of Tata Sons’ earnings came from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which spent around ~30,000 crore on dividends and share buyback in FY21. It is followed by Azim Premji of Wipro — India’s fourth largest IT services company by revenue.

The Premji family earned around ~7,337 crore by way of equity dividends and proceeds from share buyback in FY21.

Wipro paid a total equity dividend of ~548 crore in FY21.

Azim Premji's biggest source of income was from the company's share buyback. The IT major spent Rs 9,500 crore on share buyback last fiscal, bulk of which went to promoters who own nearly 73 per cent stake in Wipro.

As Tata Sons is largely owned by charitable trusts, Azim Premji becomes the most cash promoter among individuals.

Vedanta's Anil Agrawal family is at the third spot in the overall list in terms of dividend income from the group's listed company. The Agrawal family earned nearly Rs 2,400 crore by way of dividend from Vedenta and Sterlite Technologies. The non-ferrous metals-to-oil producer, Vedanta has proposed to pay almost Rs 3,500 crore as equity dividend in FY21, nearly two-third of which will accrue to promoters given their 65 per stake in the company. Interestingly, the group's most valuable company and one of the country's biggest dividend payers - Hindustan Zinc is not directly owned by promoters but is a subsidiary of Vedanta. Hindustan Zinc spent around Rs 9,000 crore on equity dividends nearly two-third of which accrued to Vedanta.

The country's wealthiest promoter Mukesh Ambani family is fourth on the list with dividend income of nearly ~2,217 crore in FY21. Ambani's stake in Reliance Industries is however worth Rs 7.21 trillion or around $100 billion, which is far ahead of Wipro's Azim Premji or Anil Agarwal of Vedenta.

This is because Reliance Industries (RIL) has a much lower dividend payout ratio than other big listed companies. In FY21, RIL distributed just 7.3 per cent of its net profit on equity dividends, against Wipro's pay-out ratio of 92 per cent and Vedanta's 24 per cent.