Bombay Shining

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According to the latest Forbes ranking, the global center of desi wealth is Bombay, not Silicon Valley (thanks, WGIIA). India is the only South Asian country with billionaire private citizens (though a Sri Lankan Tamil émigré to Malaysia made the list), and Bombay has the most.

Vinod Khosla fell below the cutoff, as did most desi American techies except Ram Shriram, an angel investor in Google who is now apparently the wealthiest desi in the U.S. So with India’s recent economic growth, Indians are making more money by staying home than emigrating, quite a reversal, even though most who emigrated were not born into ultra-wealthy families. And these figures are in dollars, not even adjusted for purchasing power in the desh.

I suspect the stats are off though. If you were to treat national wealth as personal wealth, as several South Asian ruling families do, I bet the stats would change.

Where the wild things are

The U.S. is still far and away the best place to generate wealth, and New York City alone has more billionaires than any country except Germany:

While New York has the highest number of resident billionaires with 40, Moscow is second with 25, and London comes third with 23. [Link]

Indian billionaires have surpassed Japan’s in terms of total wealth:

A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15% to 793 with India taking the lead in Asia… India’s 23 billionaires have a combined net worth of $99bn, surpassing former Asian leader Japan’s 27 billionaires with their total worth of $67bn. [Link]

India, whose BSE SENSEX market was up 54% in the past 12 months, is home to 10 new billionaires, more than any other country besides the U.S. Notable newcomers include Tulsi Tanti, a former textile trader whose alternative energy company owns Asia’s largest windfarm; Vijay Mallya, the liquor tycoon behind Kingfisher beer; Kushal Pal Singh, India’s biggest real estate developer; and Anurag Dikshit (pronounced “dix-sit”), another online gaming mogul, who made his fortune when he and two Americans took their PartyGaming poker company public in London last June. [Link]

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Gurgaon malls in da house:

This former army officer [Kush Pal Singh], known as KP, joined his father-in-law’s Delhi Land & Finance in 1971. Singh later built DLF City in Gurgaon, his showpiece township on the outskirts of Delhi, by acquiring land from farmers. And transformed DLF into India’s biggest real estate developer. [Link]

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p>The Ambani brothers’ spat made it into the magazine:

The gloves came off in late 2004 when they began battling publicly for the group’s control. The situation became so untenable that their mother, Kokilaben, brokered a court-approved peace settlement that entailed breaking up the $23 billion (sales) group. Mukesh got control of Reliance Industries, a $16.5 billion (sales) petrochemicals concern. Anil got four companies with interests in energy, telecom and financial services…

The brothers continue to avoid meeting in public. They might run into one another in an elevator, though; both live in an 18-story high-rise their father built. [Link]

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p>These lists are like athlete rosters at the Olympics, too diverse to draw a lot of meaningful conclusions beyond high-level trends. Here are the individual rankings. Click the name to read their story:

Rank Name Age Wealth Country How made
5 Lakshmi Mittal 55 $23.5B UK Mittal Steel
25 Azim Premji 60 13.3 India Wipro
56 Mukesh Ambani 48 8.5 India Reliance telecom, conglomerate
104 Anil Ambani 46 5.7 India Reliance telecom, conglomerate
114 Kushal Pal Singh 74 5.0 India Gurgaon malls
125 Sunil Mittal 48 4.9 India Airtel
140 Kumar Birla 38 4.4 India Cement, commodities
147 Ananda Krishnan 67 4.3 Malaysia Maxis wireless, built Petronas towers, Sri Lankan Tamil
168 Shiv Nadar 60 4.0 India HCL
185 Pallonji Mistry 76 3.6 India Tata Consultancy
207 Anurag Dikshit 34 3.3 Gibraltar PartyPoker.com
245 Ravi & Shashi Ruia NA 2.8 India Hutchison Essar wireless
245 Anil Agarwal 52 2.8 UK Vedanta Resources mining
278 Adi Godrej & family 63 2.6 India Godrej consumer goods
317 Indu Jain 69 2.4 India Times of India
317 Dilip Shanghvi 50 2.4 India Sun Pharma
512 Kavitark “Ram” Shriram 50 1.5 USA Angel investor in Google
512 Naresh Goyal 56 1.5 UK Jet Airways
562 Baba Kalyani 57 1.4 India Auto parts
562 Tulsi Tanti 48 1.4 India Suzlon Power wind farm
645 NR Narayana Murthy 59 1.2 India Infosys
645 Amar Bose 77 1.2 USA Bose audio
698 Uday Kotak 47 1.1 India Kotak Mahindra Bank
746 Subhash Chandra 55 1.0 India Zee TV
746 Habil Khorakiwala 63 1.0 India Wockhardt pharma
746 Vijay Mallya 50 1.0 India Kingfisher beer

59 thoughts on “Bombay Shining”

  1. I learned a lot about who has money in India when I was traveling there. I was politely taken to a different hotel upon arrival in Udaipur even though I had made reservations 5 months in advance at the Lake Palace hotel. I ended up really liking the Shikarbadi hunting lodge I stayed at (among other things, their restaurant was excellent), but I was somewhat miffed that the Agarwal/Mittal wedding party had managed to steal my hotel room. It seems the Shikarbadi was packed full of people turned out of the Lake Palace and Shiv Niwas by the Agarwals and Mittals.

  2. Propellerhead wrote:

    Are you suggesting that the “South Asian” junta over here has collectively decided to gift POK to Pakistan?

    Don’t be an ass. This is a South Asian blog, not an Indian blog. It’s supposed to include Pakistanis, Indians, etc. Putting up an Indian nationalist map would make no sense, as it would signal this is an Indian blog. Which it isn’t.

    That said, I doubt Manish put up that particular map up on purpose. A happy accident, most likely.

  3. This is a South Asian blog, not an Indian blog. It’s supposed to include Pakistanis, Indians, etc. Putting up an Indian nationalist map would make no sense, as it would signal this is an Indian blog. Which it isn’t.

    That’s what I am talking about. Let the games begin. 🙂 So dude, are telling me that the current map is acceptable to you? Whatever happened to the whole “disputed”, “Kashmiris need Freedom” agenda? Now that you have POK you don’t want to dispute anymore? This gives more impetus to my argument as to why the map shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

    Today, I cannot claim my map, if this SAJA nonsense were to continue, I will be paying Jizya pretty soon.

  4. Vikram Seth would never write like that.

    If you didn’t presume, I was refering to Vikram Seth’ the writer, why did you give analogy of Arundhati. You just repeated it again here. Like a few days ago, one of the old members ‘Jai’ had a namesake, doesn’t mean it was him. Anyways, this issue is over from my side. Hope you do too to be considerate to other people.

  5. If you didn’t presume, I was refering to Vikram Seth’ the writer, why did you give analogy of Arundhati. You just repeated it again here. Like a few days ago, one of the old members ‘Jai’ had a namesake, doesn’t mean it was him. Anyways, this issue is over from my side. Hope you do too to be considerate to other people.

    Doesn’t the reference to Prafool Bhidwai along with Arundhati mean anything to you? Do you know why Arundhati is being referenced at all? No, I did not refer her just because you are a Suitable Boy.

  9. Jains are the Godless Jews of India. These bastards along with the Bania’s kept the country under competitive for nearly 50 years post independence. Natural resources are country’s ownership, and these guys are efficient at claiming it as their own and making money out of it. The Indian masses are the most illiterate when it comes to knowing and assessing their business leaders.