(ATF) Mukesh Ambani, the world’s fourth richest man, earned over $12 million every hour since the March lockdown in Asia’s third biggest economy – while the number of Indian billionaires jumped by over a quarter, according to IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2020.
“The combined wealth of India’s richest is a staggering US$823 billion, equating to a third of India’s GDP and more than the combined GDP of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bhutan,” the study said.
It said the current year had been a challenging one for Indian entrepreneurs as the lockdowns to battle the coronavirus pandemic had hammered business activities bringing down the Indian rupee by 7% against the US dollar.
“Despite these headwinds, IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich Listers’ wealth has grown twice as fast as the net market capitalization growth of all the companies listed in the Bombay Stock Exchange.”
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Ambani’s wealth has been propelled by a series of fund raising and strategic investment from Facebook, Google among others into Jio and Reliance Retail, which took Reliance’s market capitalisation past the 1 trillion rupees mark and helped post a 73% increase in his personal wealth.
“Ambani’s wealth is now bigger than the combined wealth of the next 5 in the list.”, said Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and Chief Researcher, Hurun India.
The rich list said there were 828 individuals who were worth at least 10 billion rupees, up from 94 last year. This number is up three times above what is was three years ago.
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