Talk about money and everyone will listen. Something that interests a lot of people is gauging the net worths of the world’s richest people. We recently talked about Pakistan’s biggest and richest business owners. The name that came on top was Mian Muhammad Mansha, the CEO of Nishat Group, who has an estimated net worth of Rs. 263.3 billion ($2.5 billion) which is way less than Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest businessman. Having said that, Pakistan and India’s richest businessmen cannot be compared because the two countries have a huge population disparity and are vastly different economies. As a result, India’s richest person several folds richer than Pakistan’s richest person.
However, a trend that is common among the two countries is that the top richest people are all men over the age of 50. There is absolutely no representation of women or young people in Pakistan and India’s richest persons list, a stark contrast to developed economies.
While this is an issue that will only be fixed over time, here are India’s richest business owners.
Mukesh Ambani, the guy with the world’s most expensive house worth $1 billion, is also the chairman, Managing Director, and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Limited. It is a Fortune Global 500 company and one of India’s most valuable companies in terms of market share. The company has numerous subsidiaries in the oil and gas sectors, petrochemicals, and Ambani has recently dabbled in the telecom sector as well by launching a subsidiary called Jio, which is a mobile operator and provides affordable Internet as well.
Azim Premji, known as the ‘Czar of the Indian IT industry’, serves as the chairman of Wipro Limited. Before Wipro was the tech giant it is today, it was known as Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd – a cooking oil business – and was founded by Premji’s father. Upon his father’s death, he left his education at Stanford University to look after the family business. However, when IBM was expelled from the country, Azim Premji moved in to fill its void and pivoted into the IT industry. Today the company has an annual revenue of $8.5 billion, has an innovation center in Silicon Valley, and also has a $100 million venture capital fund.
The Hinduja Group was started by Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja who used to trade good in the Sindh region before the Partition. In 1919, he moved the HQ to Iran and in 1979 it was shifted to London. Today, The Hinduja Group is run by four siblings Srichand, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok, and together they oversee a business that ranges from trucks and lubricants to banking and cable television.
Lakshmi Mittal serves as the CEO and Chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel-making company. The company, after losing $7.9 billion in 2015, reported a net profit of $1.8 billion in 2016, its first net profit in 5 years. Mittal’s company has teamed up with an Italian steel firm to put a bid to acquire an Italian steel-making company Ilva. He also plans to set up a global HQ for the company is Luxembourg. Mittal has been named Time’s International Newsmaker of the Year 2006 and was one of the ‘Most Influential Persons in the World’ in 2007.
Pallonji Mistry is the force behind India’s 152-year-old Shapoorji Pallonji Group, an engineering and construction conglomerate which is run by his son Shapoor now. However, as its chairman he owns Shapoorji Pallonji Construction Limited, Forbes Textiles, and Eureka Forbes Limited. A major chunk of his wealth comes from his 18.4% stake in Tata Sons, making him the single largest shareholder in India’s biggest private group. In 2003, Mistry gave up his Indian nationality to become an Irish citizen since India does not allow dual nationality.
Shiv Nadar is the founder and chairman of HCL, an IT enterprise he founded in the 1970s. Over the last four decades, he has transformed his company into a force to be reckoned with. He started off making calculators and microprocessors at HCL. Today, the company has an annual revenue of $7.5 billion, making it India’s fourth-largest software services provider. The company employs 120,000 people worldwide and recently invested $780 million in an intellectual property partnership with IBM. Other than his IT business, Shiv Nadar feels strongly about education and has founded the Shiv Nadar Foundation to develop India’s education system.
The Godrej Family is perhaps best-known for its 119-year-old consumer-goods giant called the Godrej Group. It was started by Ardeshir Godrej, who gave up his profession as a lawyer to make locks in 1897 and made the world’s first vegetable oil-based soap product in 1918. Today, led by the vision of Adi Godrej, who has a personal net worth of $2.7 billion, his brother Nadir Godrej and cousin Jamshyd Godrej, the group has expanded its business and today commands a presence in Africa after it acquired 3 personal-care companies in Kenya, Senegal, and Zambia.
Called the ‘King of Commodities’, Kumar Birla serves as the chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of the biggest Indian companies. He is also responsible for a major restructuring going on inside the company. He has successfully conducted various mergers which include one with Grasim Industries and another between his telecom unit Idea Cellular and Vodafone India to rival Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio. He also serves as the chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science.
Dilip Shanghvi is a founding partner and Managing Director of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and started it in 1983 after borrowing $200 from his father to make psychiatric drugs. Over the years he has grown the company by strategic acquisitions, the biggest of which was the purchase of Sun Pharmaceutical’s rival Ranbaxy Laboratories for $4 billion in 2014. Today, the company is the world’s fifth-largest generics maker and had a $4.1 billion annual revenue in 2016.
In 1980s, when India’s economy was unstable, Uday Kotak still refused an offer from a multinational company and started work in his own country. Today he is a successful investment banker, and the executive vice chairman and Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank. In 2014, his bank acquired its rival ING Vysya Bank and as a result has seen its profits surge. Net profits of the Kotak Mahindra Bank were reported at $130 million – a 40% increment – in the most recent quarter.
Cyrus Poonawalla has made billions of dollars from his vaccine empire. He serves as the chairman of the Poonawalla Group, which includes the big subsidiary Serum Institute of India, which he founded in 1966. It is a biotech company that manufactures 1.3 billion pediatric vaccines annually, and has become one of the world’s largest vaccine makers in terms of volume. The company reported a revenue of $695 million with a record $360 million profit. However, Cyrus indulges in philanthropic activities as well and recently contributed $2.5 million to a hospital for the underprivileged which has been named after his late wife.
Note: The net worth is taken from Forbes and stands correct for 28th September 2017.
[Image Source News18, Forbes]
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