Billionaires Gallery: Mukesh Ambani Tops 200 Indian Billionaires in Forbes’ Annual List of Global Rich

Mukesh Ambani is the ninth richest man in the world, according to the annual list revealed today by Forbes magazine. He chairs and runs $110 billion (revenue) Reliance Industries, which has interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom, retail and financial services. Reliance was founded by Mukesh Ambani’s late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer. After his father’s death in 2002, Ambani and his younger sibling Anil divided up the family empire. Reliance’s telecom and broadband service Jio has more than 470 million subscribers.

Joining him on the list are Zscaler founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry, airline veteran Rakesh Gangwal, Pakistani American businessman Shahid Khan, as well as other Indians like Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani and HCL founder Shiv Nadar. commodities king Kumar Birla, and Serum Institute of India founder Cyrus Poonawala.

The World’s Billionaires list is a window into the economy, and especially the stock market,” says Forbes senior editor Chase Peterson-Withorn. “Tracking who’s up, down, in and out of ranks, shows which companies are on the top and which are faltering. It’s also an incredibly important piece of investigative reporting. The billionaire class is hugely wealthy, and hence hugely powerful — it’s crucial we know who they are and what they are doing with their vast fortunes.”

This year, the fortunes of billionaires “continue to swell as global stock markets shrug off war, political unrest and lingering inflation,” Forbes noted in it’s introduction. “There are now more billionaires than ever,” the magazine said — “2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021.” They are also the richest — “worth $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up by $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021.” Two-thirds of the list’s members are worth more than a year ago; only one fourth are poorer. U.S. boasts a record 813 billionaires worth a combined $5.7 trillion, followed by China and India, which has 200 billionaires (also a record). 

Shahid Khan is the owner of auto parts supplier Flex-N-Gate and the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguar. The Pakistani American bought Flex-N-Gate from his former employer in 1980. An engineer, his design for a one-piece truck bumper was the basis for his success; the company now has 76 plants worldwide and over 27,000 employees. Khan bought the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2012 and the UK’s Fulham football club in 2013. 

Jay Chaudhry is CEO of Zscaler, a cybersecurity firm he founded in 2008. It went public in March 2018. He and his family own around 40% of the Nasdaq-listed firm. Before Zscaler, he founded four other tech companies that were all acquired: SecureIT, CoreHarbor, CipherTrust and AirDefense. In 1996, Chaudhry and his wife, Jyoti, both quit their jobs and used their life savings to start cybersecurity firm SecureIT, his first startup. He moved to the U.S. in 1980 to attend graduate school and now lives in Nevada, after relocating from the Bay Area. 

Other Indian Americans on the list are airline veteran Rakesh Gangwal, Samaras co-founder Sanjit Biswas, GQG Partners founder, chairman and chief investment officer Rajiv Jain, Arista Networks president and CEO Jayshree Ullal, and Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri.

Gautam Adani is chairman of the $32 billion (revenue) Adani Group with interests in ports, airports, power generation and transmission, and green energy, among others. The company, which began in 1988 as a commodities trading firm, expanded through acquisitions and with the support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Are is the country’s biggest airport operator and also controls Mundra Port, India’s largest, in his home state of Gujarat. In January 2023, U.S. firm Hindenburg Research accused Adani and his companies of financial fraud and stock market manipulation. The Adani Group has denied any wrongdoing. The company’s shares, which had plummeted following the Hindenburg report, recovered substantially after India’s Supreme Court ruled in the group’s favor a year later. 

Also listed is his Cyprus-based older brother Vinod Adani, who was at one point, the world’s third richest person. He has has stakes in various Adani group companies that are held through multiple overseas investment firms that belong to him. The group became India’s second-largest cement producer in 2022, after Swiss firm Holcim’s Indian assets were acquired for $10.5 billion through Vinod’s investment firms.

Indian IT pioneer Shiv Nadar co-founded HCL in a garage in 1976 to make calculators and microprocessors with five friends. Today, his $12.6 billion company is among India’s largest software services providers. In July 2020, he stepped down as chairman of HCL Technologies, handing over the position to his daughter, Roshni Nadar Malhotra. He’s now chairman emeritus and strategic advisor. One of India’s leading philanthropists, he has donated $1.1 billion to his Shiv Nadar Foundation, which backs education-related causes.

Son of a horse breeder, Cyrus Poonawalla, founder of Serum Institute of India, established the Pune-based biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals company in 1966 and built it into the world’s largest vaccine maker, producing over 1.5 billion doses annually of a range of vaccines, including for measles, polio and flu. Under his U.K.-educated son Adar, Serum’s CEO, the company invested $800 million to build a new factory to make Covid-19 vaccines. Serum’s Covishield, the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, was the most widely used in India during the pandemic.His assets include a majority stake in listed financial services firm Poonawalla Fincorp as well as a stake in The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pune.

Commodities king Kumar Birla is the fourth generation head of the storied, $65 billion (revenue) Aditya Birla Group. More than half is generated outside India, where it has a presence in 41 countries. The group’s interests span cement, textiles and aluminium to telecom, financial services and paints. It has recently entered new sectors such as branded jewelry and hospitality. A chartered accountant and graduated from London Business School, he inherited the family empire at age 28 when his father Aditya Birla died in 1995. In 2021, he stepped down as chairman of debt-strapped telecom firm Vodafone Idea, formed by the 2018 merger between his Idea Cellular and Vodafone India. In 2023, his daughter Ananya and son Aryaman, joined the boards of Grasim and Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail.

Some newly-minted Indian billionaires dubbed on the list this year — Landmark Group chair and CEO Renuka Jagtiani, Medanta hospital chain founder and chairman Naresh Trehan, Apollo Tyres chairman Onkar Kanwar, and FIVE Holdings proprietor Kabir Mulchandani.

Others on the list include Savitri Jindal and family, Sun Pharmaceuticals founder Dilip Shanghvi; real estate developer, Kushal Pal Singh, veteran Mumbai investor Radhakishan Damani, ArcelorMittal chairman Lakshmi Mittal, India’s cola king, Ravi Jaipuria, Kotak Mahindra Bank founder Uday Kotak, Wipro founder Azim Premji, politician and property magnate Mangal Prabhat Lodha, pharma magnate Pankaj Patel, telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal, investor Rekha Jhunjhunwala, Intas Pharmaceuticals founder Hasmukh Chudgar, Middle East retail king M.A. Yusuff Ali, retail king Gopikishan Damani, cement czar Benu Gopal Bangur, two-wheeler tycoon Vikram Lal, Divi’s Laboratories founder Murali Divi, Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman Rajan Mittal and on-executive director Rakesh Mittal, Samir Mehta and Sudhir Mehta of Torrent Pharmaceuticals, InterGlobe Aviation co-founder Rahul Bhatia, Mahendra Choksi of Asian Paints, Rajiv Bajaj and Sanjiv Bajaj of Bajaj Group, Vinod Rai Gupta of Havells India, Landmark Group chairwoman Renuka Jagtiani, Zerodha co-founders Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath, Infosys co-founder and retired chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, property magnate Vikas Oberoi, jewelry giant Joy Alukkas, Wadia Group chairman Nusli Wadia, Force Motors chairman Abhay Firodia, Rajan Raheja of the Raheja property clan, Bharat Forge founder Baba Kalyani, InoxGFL group chairman Vivek Jain, TVS Motor Company chairman emeritus Venu Srinivasan, Madhur Bajaj, Niraj Bajaj, and Shekhar Bajaj of Bajaj Group, Patanjali Ayurved chairman Acharya Balkrishna, Smita Crishna-Godrej, Adi Godrej, Nadir Godrej, and Rishad Naoroji of the Godrej clan, Solar Industries India founder Satyanarayan Nuwal, Berger Paints India vice-chairman Gurbachan Singh Dhingra and chairman Kuldip Singh Dhingra, Infosys co-founder of Senapathy “Kris” Gopalakrishnan, Pidilite Industries chairman Madhukar Parekh, SRF chairman emeritus Arun Bharat Ram, Sanjiv Goenka of Sanjiv Goenka Group, Nirma founder Karsanbhai Patel, Radha Vembu of Zoho Corp, Anu Aga of Thermax, RPG Group chairman Harsh Goenka, Kalyan Jewellers chairman T.S. Kalyanaraman, Arvind Poddar of Balkrishna Industries, USV India chair Leena Tewari, Sun TV Network founder Kalanithi Maran, Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani, and PI Industries chairman Salil Singhal.

Also listed is Indonesia-based Sri Prakash Lohia, who made much of his fortune producing fertilizers and polymers; Malaysia-based entrepreneur Ananda Krishnan; Motherson Group chair Vivek Chaand Sehgal of Australia; Middle East-based Burjeel Holdings founder and chairman Shamsheer Vayalil;  Dubai-based businessman Ravi Pillai, and Sunny Varkey of Dubai-based GEMS Education

Among billionaires under 30 are bothers Firoz Mistry, 27, and Zahan Mistry, 25, thanks primarily to their 4.6% stakes in Tata Sons. The $150 billion (revenue) Indian conglomerate that owns 29 public companies, including Tata Consultancy and Tata Motors. He and Zahan inherited their stakes during a 2022 marked by family tragedy, when their 54-year-old father Cyrus Mostry died in a car accident less than three months after their grandfather, Pallonji Mistry, one-time chairman of Tata and its largest individual shareholder, died at the age of 93. Their uncle Shapoor Mistry, who is also in the Forbes list, holds the rest of the family’s 18.4% stake. The brothers have been taking on leadership roles in the debt-laden Shapoorji Pallonji Group and helping to reorganize it in the wake of their father’s death. Though he and his brothers are Irish citizens, they live in Mumbai, where both the SP Group and Tata are based.