Mukesh Ambani tops Hurun’s India rich list
INDIA NOW HAS 209 BILLIONAIRES, 50 MORE THAN A YEAR EARLIER, DESPITE PANDEMIC
NEW DELHI: Mukesh Ambani’s wealth grew 24% in the past year, with his net worth reaching $82 billion, making the Reliance Industries Ltd chairman the eighth-richest person in the world, according to Hurun Global Rich List 2021.
Keeping with the global trend, the number of billionaires grew in India in 2020. The country now has 209 billionaires, 50 more than a year earlier. Apoorva Mehta, 34, of Instacart and Nikhil Kamath, 34, of Zerodha are the youngest Indian billionaires with a net worth of $1.7 billion, each.
“Indian wealth creation is dominated by cyclical/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 the US in terms of the number of billionaires,” said Anas Rahman Junaid, managing director and chief researcher, Hurun India.
There are now 3,228 billionaires globally, an increase of 414 billionaires from 2019.
Despite the pandemic, the wealth of billionaires jumped $3.5 trillion or 32% to $14.7 trillion.
“Despite the disruption caused by Covid-19, this year has seen the biggest wealth increase of the last decade. A stock markets boom, driven partly by quantitative easing and flurry of new listings, have minted eight new dollar billionaires a week for the past year. The world has never seen this much wealth created in just one year, much more than perhaps could have been expected for a year so badly disrupted by covid-19,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher, Hurun Report.
Asia accounted for 51% of the world’s billionaires and 45% of their wealth. North America has 24% of the world’s billionaires and 33% of the wealth.
Elon Musk of Tesla added a record $151 billion and became the richest person globally for the first time, with $197 billion net worth.
China now has 1,058 billiontotal aires, up 259 from 2019, compared to 696 billionaires in the US, up 70. China and the US make up over half of the ‘known’ billionaires in the world.
India is third with 177 billionaires. Germany, the UK and Switzerland followed with 100plus each.
Jeff Bezos, who was the richest man last year, is now second with $189 billion net worth, despite adding $49 billion.
Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are the third, fourth, and fifth richest with net worth of $114 billion, $110 billion, and $101 billion.
Beijing is the world’s billionaire capital for the sixth year, with 145 billionaires living there. New York slipped to third place after Shanghai. Six of the top 10 cities with the highest concentration of billionaires are now in China.