A new metric of riches: Ranking rich Indians who are making others wealthy

In an interview last year, Jeff Bezos made a novel suggestion: Let the world’s richest be listed not by the fortunes they amass for themselves, but by the wealth they create for others. This is an interesting way of looking at wealth creation. The institutions of markets and the joint stock corporation allow an entrepreneur to seek capital from others in pursuit of his/her idea. If the enterprise flounders, the investors lose. And if it succeeds, the entrepreneur, or in the case of multi-generational businesses, the family concerned, creates wealth for shareholders—their partners in the journey. Conventional rich lists overlook the wealth an entrepreneur creates for others.

In the process of making a couple of hundred billion dollars for Bezos, Amazon has made its investors richer by over $2 trillion. Nvidia’s meteoric rise has made Jensen Huang a wealthy man. But his $164 billion is paltry compared with the $4.3 trillion enterprise value he created for others.

This infographic is a ranking of Indian entrepreneurs and families that have created the most wealth for others. The market cap of the groups they represent or control is given in a small, white box, while the extent of the wealth they have created for others is represented by the blue bar. Subtracting the second figure from the first will typically give you the net worth of the entrepreneur/family. The values are as of market closing on Friday, November 28. Only assets that are held as stocks in publicly quoted companies have been considered.

Wealth created for investors – Indian business leaders (₹ lakh crore)

Rank	Leader/ Family	Group/ Company	Wealth created (₹ lakh cr)	M-cap (₹ lakh cr)
1	Noel Tata / Tata Trusts	Tata Group	13.9	28.4
2	Mukesh Ambani	Reliance Industries	11.9	23.4
3	Sunil Mittal	Bharti Enterprises	6.8	13.9
4	Bajaj Group	Bajaj Group	6.3	14.8
5	Anand Mahindra	Mahindra Group	5.1	6.9
6	Gautam Adani	Adani Group	4.5	14.8
7	Kumar Birla	Aditya Birla Group	4.3	8.8
8	Uday Kotak	Kotak Mahindra Group	3.1	4.2
9	Sajjan Jindal	JSW Group	2	4.6
10	Dilip Sanghvi	Sun Pharma	2	4.4
11	Shi Nadar	HCL Group	1.7	4.4
12	Anil Agarwal	Vedanta Group	1.7	4.2
13	Analjit Singh	Max Group	1.5	1.9
14	Rahul Bhatia	InterGlobe Aviation	1.3	2.3
15	Manish Choksi, Malav	Asian Paints Group	1.3	2.8
16	R Thyagrajan	Sriram Group	1.2	1.7
17	Hinduja Family	Hinduja Group	1.1	1.7
18	Adi Godrej, Nadir Godrej	Godrej Group	1	2.3
19	Pavan Munjal	Hero Motocorp	1	1.5
20	Siddhartha Lal	Eicher	1	1.9
21	Venu Srinivasan	Venu Srinivasan Group	0.9	2
22	Y K Hamid	Cipla Group	0.9	1.2
23	Vivek Chaand Sehgal	Motherson Group	0.9	1.5
24	Murali K Divi	Divi's Labs	0.8	1.7
25	Prathap C Reddy	Apollo Hospitals	0.8	1.1
26	G V Prasad	Dr. Reddy's Labs	0.8	1.1
27	Nusli Wadia	Wadia Group	0.7	1.6
28	Ravi jaipuria	Jaipuria Group	0.7	1.8
29	Samir & Sudhir Mehta	Torrent Group	0.7	1.9
30	Azim Premji	Wipro	0.7	2.6
31	Lalit Keshre & Harsh Jain	Groww	0.7	1
32	Anand Deshpande	Persistent Systems	0.7	1
33	Radhakishan Damani	Avenue Supermarts	0.7	2.6
34	Vinod, Girish Tanti	Suzlon Energy	0.6	0.7
35	Jitendar Virwani	Embassy Group	0.5	0.6
36	Manju, Vinita & Nilesh Gupta	Lupin	0.5	1
37	K M Mammen	MRF	0.5	0.6
38	K P Singh	DLF Group	0.5	1.8
39	Madhukar Parekh	Pidilite	0.5	1.5
40	Inder Jaisinghani	Polycab India	0.4	1.1

Presenting, a new billionaire math

Infosys is India’s seventh-largest company by market capitalisation. Yet, its storied founders—tech luminaries NR Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani, among others—rank low on the list of the nation’s hundred richest individuals.

The wealth generated by Infosys has flowed outward, enriching a vast constellation of domestic institutions, global investors, mutual funds, and millions of ordinary stakeholders who together share in its remarkable success.

Of an M-cap of about ₹6.4 lakh crore, promoters today own roughly 13%, or around ₹83,700 crore of value—a sliver by Indian promoter standards.

Infosys founders therefore are among entrepreneurs who might not themselves figure in the top tiers of contemporary India’s rich lists but can find deep satisfaction in having been champion wealth creators for others.

Eternal Ltd, the holding company of Zomato and Blinkit, is a ₹3 lakh crore company, of which founder Deepinder Goyal now owns less than 4% as scores of early employees, funds and early believers have seen their net worth transformed.

Groww’s listed parent also fits this archetype : Four founders together control just over a quarter of a ₹97,000 crore market-cap platform, leaving the majority of the upside to public shareholders and institutional capital that backed them.

This ethos is not confined to digital darlings. Anand Mahindra’s personal net worth, while significant, barely nudges the top hundred in India even as Mahindra & Mahindra and its constellation of listed group entities have multiplied wealth for legions of long-term shareholders under his astute stewardship.

The pattern is echoed in Cipla, Aurobindo Pharma, Dr Reddy’s Labs, TVS Motor and Tech Mahindra, where promoters still hold meaningful stakes but mutual funds and retail investors together command a chunky slice of the cap table, firmly qualifying them as “people’s businesses”.