India’s billionaires: Mukesh Ambani tops list for 8th straight year

NEW DELHI: India’s 100 richest people are for the first time all billionaires, according to an annual Forbes survey released on Thursday, with the country’s top earners worth a third more combined than last year.
Industrialist Mukesh Ambani topped the list for an eighth straight year with a $23.6-billion fortune, Forbes India said on its website. The wealth of Ambani, chairman of conglomerate Reliance Industries, climbed by $2.6 billion from last year.
The combined worth of the 100 richest Indians now totals $346 billion, Forbes said, an increase of a third on 2013 fueled by stock prices up nearly 30 percent since January.
The figures come amid disquiet in India about a yawning divide between the elite and burgeoning middle classes and hundreds of millions still living in deep poverty.
The minimum sum to qualify for the Forbes list was $1 billion for the first time, up from $635 billion in 2013.
Indian pharmaceutical magnate Dilip Shanghvi, whose wealth grew by $4.1 billion to $18 billion, is the new number two on the list, displacing London-based steel baron Lakshmi Mittal. The Indian-born magnate slipped to fifth place at $15.8 billion.
Shanghvi’s wealth surged after his Sun Pharmaceuticals bought rival generic giant Ranbaxy Laboratories from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo for $4 billion in April, Forbes said.
The pharmaceutical sector is one of India’s biggest wealth generators, with over a fifth of the 100 richest holding assets in the drugs and health care sectors, Forbes said.
Moving up to third place was Azim Premji, chief of outsourcing giant Wipro, whose fortune climbed by $4.1 billion to $18 billion.
The rise in share prices has vastly outpaced economy expansion running at under six percent, well below near double-digit levels of a few years ago.
India’s mood has “moved very quickly from gloom to boom” under the new right-wing government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi which took office in May, said Naazneen Karmali, India editor of Forbes Asia.
“The new federal government’s mandate for change has sparked euphoria in the stock market, causing a seismic shift in Indian wealth this year,” Karmali added.
But tycoon Vijay Mallya, known as the “King of Good Times,” fell off India’s most wealthy list, engulfed by massive debts of his grounded carrier Kingfisher Airlines, named after his beer brand.
India’s richest are still significantly worse off than the world’s wealthiest man, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose estimated net worth is $76 billion, up $8 billion from a year ago.