Shiv Nadar is Only Indian in Forbes List of World’s Top 20 Richest Billionaires
HCL Technologies founder and chairman Shiv Nadar is the only Indian in Forbes list of ‘World’s Top 20 Richest Billionaires in Technology.’ Ranked at number 20, Nadar co-founded HCL in a garage in 1976 to make calculators and microprocessors. Today, he chairs HCL Technologies, a $9.7 billion (revenue) company that is one of India’s largest software services providers. The company employs 149,000 people in 45 countries worldwide, hires high school grads and trains them on the job.
Forbes says that Nadar’s net worth dropped by $2.7 billion since last year due to a plunge in the price of HCL Technologies shares. In December 2018, HCL Technologies agreed to buy some software products from IBM for $1.8 billion.
One of India’s leading philanthropists, Nadar has donated $662 million to his Shiv Nadar Foundation, which backs education-related causes.
The list is compiled by Forbes using stock prices and exchange rates from March 18.
In all, there are 241 technology billionaires on Forbes’ 2020 billionaires list, up from 215 last year, the magazine says. Combined, they are worth a whopping $1.4 trillion — 16% of the total net worth for all 2,095 billionaires on the list this year.
On the number one spot is Amazon founder, CEO and president Jeff Bezos, followed by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. Others listed include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Meanwhile, in the Forbes World’s Billionaires list, also complied on March 18, Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani is ranked 21, DMart founder Radhakishan Damani is on the 71st spot, and the Hunduja brothers are at number 91 on the list. Also included are Bharti Airtel’s Sunil Mittal (157), Serum Institute of India founder Cyrus Poonawalla (165), commodities king Kumar Birla (185) and ArcelorMittal chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal (196).