Mukesh Ambani again tops Forbes list of richest Indians

MUMBAI: Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani topped the Forbes list of richest Indians for the ninth consecutive year. Ambani, who rolled out his most ambitious project, Reliance Jio Infocomm, this month increased his net worth to $22.7 billion from $18.9 billion a year earlier as shares of Reliance Industries gained 21%, Forbes said.

Dilip Shanghvi, with a networth of $16.9 billion, retained the second spot on the 2016 list, although the mogul behind Sun Pharmaceuticals saw a drop of $1.1 billion in his wealth. The combined net worth of India’s 100 wealthiest people was $381billion, up 10% from $345 billion in 2015, Forbes said. Entering the list requires a minimum networth of $1.2 billion.

The Hinduja brothers of the Hinduja Group moved up to the third spot with a networth of 15.2 billion, while Azim Premji, chairman of IT company Wipro, slipped to fourth position with $15 billion. Rounding up the top 10 were Pallonji Mistry of Shapoorji Pallonji Group ($13.9 billion), Lakshmi Mittal of ArcelorMittal ($12.5 billion), the Godrej family ($12.4 billion), Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies ($11.4 billion), Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group ($8.8 billion) and Cyrus Poonawalla of Serum Institute of India ($8.6 billion). New entrants include Acharya Balkrishna at No. 48.

The primary stakeholder and managing director of Patanjali Ayurvedahas a net worth of $2.5 billion. Mumbai-born serial entrepreneurs Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia, who sold their ad tech firm Media.net for $900 million in August to a consortium of Chinese investors, made their debut at No. 95 with $1.3 billion. A drop in Flipkart’s valuation hit Sachin and Binny Bansal, who fell off the list within a year of entering. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon ($1.83 billion) was among the eight who re-entered the list this year.