The dollar billionaire is a fairly recent species. The first such example was in 1913 with the rise of the American oil billionaire John D Rockefeller. His net wealth in current terms would be around $27 billion, which puts him nowhere near the top of the wealthiest list - the current world’s richest person, Elon Musk, is worth much more at $243 billion. 

Since Rockefeller however, the number of billionaires has multiplied. Their individual wealth has also risen rapidly. In the first half of 2023, the world's 500 richest people collectively added $852 billion to their fortunes, according to Bloomberg. In this edition of Chart of the Week, we look at the  wealth profiles of India’s top 14 richest people, providing insights into their industries, holdings, and strategies of wealth accumulation. 

For a long time, Mukesh Ambani stood unrivaled at the top among Indian billionaires. The Chairman of Reliance Industries, is currently the richest Indian with a net worth of $90.6 billion (approximately Rs 7.5 lakh crore) as of July 4, 2023. He climbed the ranks rapidly eight years ago, when Reliance Retail became India's top revenue-generating retailer in FY14, earning Rs 17,640 crore. This led to his net worth surging by $ 0.8 billion to $21.1 billion in 2014. 

Jio's launch in 2016 and the introduction of the Jio Phone in 2017 propelled Ambani's net worth to $40.2 billion, a significant surge of 77.1%. However, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a decline of 36.6% in his net worth to $37.7 billion in March 2020 from $59.5 billion in December 2019. Yet, with Google's investment in Jio Platforms and the introduction of Jio Mart and Jio 5G, his net worth rebounded to $76.9 billion by the end of the year.

The only real Indian challenger to Ambani’s nosebleed levels of wealth has been Gautam Adani.Adani, the Founder and Chairman of the Adani Group, is the second richest Indian with a net worth of $61.4 billion (approximately Rs 5.1 lakh crore) as of July 4, 2023. He briefly surpassed Ambani to claim the top spot from April 2022 to January 2023, with a net worth of $121 billion. Adani has witnessed an extraordinary surge in his wealth, with his net worth growing 12x since 2014. He holds majority stakes in all of the Adani Group's listed companies.

Between 2018 and 2022, Adani's stocks experienced substantial gains ranging from 12x to 80x growth in stock prices. With acquisitions such as Holcim India’s businesses and NDTV, Adani surpassed Ambani in 2022, reaching a net worth of $121 billion. 

However, in January 2023, a now famous report by Hindenburg accused the conglomerate of accounting fraud and stock manipulation. This sent Adani stocks into free fall,  and saw Gautam Adani suffer the largest one-day loss of net worth in history for any billionaire. His wealth plummeted by $20.8 billion on January 27, 2023. 

Following this setback, Adani’s wealth bottomed out in February 2023, when his net worth dropped to $37.7 billion. Of course, that is still massively wealthy by any standard - no Adani was going to the bank to take gold out of the family locker. 

Since then, Adani stocks have regained around 40% of their value on average, resulting in a 63% recovery in his net worth by June 2023 to $61.4 billion. 

Shapoor Mistry, the Chairman of Shapoorji Pallonji group, shares his wealth with his late brother Cyrus Mistry. He was named the Chairman after the death of his brother in September 2022. This led to a sudden increase in his net worth in November 2022 to $29 billion. The stakes previously held by Cyrus Mistry in Tata Sons, amounting to 18.4%, were also credited to Shapoor Mistry and his family due to unclear succession arrangements.

HCL Technologies’ Shiv Nadar is currently the wealthiest tech billionaire in India (net worth of $27.4 billion), followed by Wipro’s Azim Premji with $24 billion. The majority of Nadar’s wealth is held in public holdings of HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems, with equity stakes of 61% and 63% respectively. Azim Premji, on the other hand, holds a 62% stake in Wipro. Apart from this, he has an additional 10.5% outstanding shares in his company through two irrevocable charitable trusts.

Lakshmi Mittal, the Chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company outside of China, has a net worth of $19 billion as of July 4, 2023. The majority of his wealth is from the 38% stake he holds in ArcelorMittal. 

Radhakishan Damani, the founder of Avenue Supermarts (D-Mart), is a passive investor who features in Trendlyne’s superstars list. The bulk of his net worth is from the 60% equity holdings in Avenue Supermarts, which he holds via a promoter group consisting of Bright Star, his wife, and three trusts. According to Bloomberg's billionaire index, Damani lost the most wealth ($2.8 billion or 15.1% of his net worth) from November 2022 to March 2023, followed by Adani ($69.8 billion) and Ambani ($13.4 billion).

Two pharmaceutical magnates, Sun Pharmaceuticals’ Dilip Shanghvi and Serum Institute’s Cyrus Poonawalla, also feature in the list. Serum Institute is most famous for having produced around 30 crore doses of Covid vaccine from March 2020 to June 2021. This led Poonawalla’s net worth to spike by 68.2% to $24.4 billion, helping him become the richest Indian in the pharma sector, followed by Dilip Shanghvi. Apart from this, Poonawalla also owns a 62% stake in Poonawalla Fincorp. Dilip Shanghvi, the managing director of Sun Pharmaceuticals, has a significant portion of his wealth tied to his ownership stakes in Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (54%), Sun Pharma Advanced Research (66%) and Suzlon Energy (12%).

Savitri Jindal, Uday Kotak, Kumar Birla and Sunil Mittal have derived their net worth from majority stakes in their respective companies. Savitri Jindal, the richest Indian woman and chairperson emeritus of Jindal Steel & Power, has a 40% stake in O.P.Jindal group, which operates JSW Steel, Jindal Steel & Power, JSW Energy, Jindal Saw, Jindal Stainless and JSW Holdings. On average, these stocks have risen by 31.1% in the past six months. This resulted in her net worth growing 18.7% to $16.5 billion in the same period. 

Uday Kotak, the Executive Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, is the richest banker in India. With a 26% stake in Kotak Mahindra Bank, his net worth has modestly risen by 4.3% to $14.3 billion in the past six months. The bank’s stock price marginally rose by 1.5% during the same period.

Kumar Birla, the Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, owns 30% of Hindalco Industries, 34% of Grasim Industries, 10% of Vodafone Idea and 14% of Aditya Birla Capital. Sunil Mittal, the Founder and Chairperson of Bharti Enterprises, owns 28% of Bharti Airtel stocks, which have seen an 8% surge in price, leading to a 12% increase in Mittal’s net worth to $14 billion in the past six months.