Savitri Jindal becomes Asia’s richest
SAVITRI Jindal, who has a fortune worth $11.3bn thanks to the Jindal Group conglomerate, went past China's Yang Huiyan to become the richest woman in Asia in the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
Huiyan, who controls China's largest real-estate developer Country Garden Holdings, had a fortune of $24bn in 2021 which made her the richest in Asia. But she lost a whopping $11bn owing to the real-estate crisis in her country which saw her not only slipping below Jindal but also fellow Chinese tycoon Fan Hongwei, the chief executive of chemical fibre company Hengli Petrochemical Co, Bloomberg reported.
Huiyan remained Asia's richest woman for the last five years till disaster struck.
Jindal, on the other hand, is one of India's richest individuals. A mother of nine children, many of whom now control the conglomerate's companies, Jindal became the chairperson of the Jindal Group shortly after her husband OP Jindal passed away in a helicopter crash in 2005. The group is the third-largest producer of steel in India and also deals in cement, infrastructure and energy.
The 72-year-old Jindal's net worth has seen fluctuations in recent years. In April 2020, it fell to $3.2bn but rebounded to $15.6bn in April 2022 as Russia's adventure in Ukraine saw prices of commodities shooting up.