Amazing Indian Entrepreneurs - Guest Column by Anand Daniel , Accel Partners

Anand Daniel 73 Stories

Tuesday April 05, 2011 , 3 min Read

images/stories/guest_column/anand-daniel.gif — Now that India has reached the top of the rankings in all forms of cricket (One day, Test and T20) after the splendid cricket world-cup victory last Saturday, I'm sufferring from acute CWS (cricket withdrawal syndrome). To take my mind off cricket, I went to Instapaper and was catching up on my reading. I came across this article in Forbes claiming that BRIC countries surge in Billionaires list this year. As I was browsing through the list of Indians billionaires, I was wondering how many of these were self-made or entrepreneurs. Of the $246.5B in net worth amongst these 55 people, $80B (32% by networth) belongs to the 26 (47% by number) self-made/entrepreneur billionaires.

Couple of quick observations:

In terms of count: Software tops the list with 6 billionaires (5 from Infosys) followed by Real Estate (4), Pharma (3), Media (2) & Commodities (2)
In terms of NetWorth: Software ($13.3B), Real Estate ($10.5B), Pharma ($9.7B), Telco ($8.3B), Media ($6.4B), Mining ($6.4B)
The youngest entrepreneur on this list is 45 and the oldest is 87
Even though people like Azim Premji, Ajay Piramal, Cyrus Poonawalla, etc. have built great companies in new industries they did not inherit, they are still not counted on this list as self-made since they started out inheriting companies in some shape or form (this is how Forbes has classified them)
I browsed through the stories behind these amazing Indians and many of them are highly inspiring. I have provided links to their Wikipedia pages (if available) in case you want to browse as well.

Here's the original listing from Forbes. And below you can find the self-made/entrepreneurs list:

Gautam Adani - Adani Group (Commodities, Infrastructure)
Sunil Mittal - Bharti Airtel Enterprises (telecom)
Kushal Pal Singh - DLF (real estate)
Anil Agarwal - Vedanta (Mining, Metals)
Dilip Shangvi - Sun Pharma (Pharma)
Shiv Nadar - HCL (Software)
Kalanithi Maran - Sun TV Network (Media)
Uday Kotak - Kotak Mahindra Bank (Banking)
Micky Jagtiani - Landmark Stores (Retail)
Subash Chandra - Zee TV (Media)
G. M. Rao - GMR Group (Infrastructure)
Desh Bandhu Gupta - Lupin (Pharma)
Narayana Murthy - Infosys (Software)
Nandan Nilekani - Infosys (Software)
Ajay Kalsi - Indus Gas (Oil)
Kris Gopalakrishnan - Infosys (Software)
Brijmohan Lall Munjal - Hero Honda (Motorcycles)
K. Anji Reddy - Dr. Reddys Labs (Pharma)
Ram Prasad Goenka - RPG group (diversified)
K. Dinesh - Infosys (Software)
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala - Rare Enterprises (Investments)
Brij Bhusha Singal - Steel
S.D. Shibulal - Infosys (Software)
Mangal Prabhat Lodha - Lodha Group (Real Estate)
Ramesh Chandra - Unitech (Real Estate)
Harindarpal Banga - Noble (Commodities)
Mofatraj Munot - Kalpataru Group (Real Estate)

As I was browsing the above list, I couldn't help but notice that it is missing a whole slew of highly successful Indian entrepreneurs around the globe. Here are a few names at the top of my head that I know off and admire:

Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande - Sycamore, Cascade (networking)
Vinod Khosla - Sun Microsystems (Computers)
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw - Biocon (Biotech)
G.R. Gopinath - Air Deccan (airlines)
Vikram Akula - SKS Microfinance (Finance)
Deep Kalra - MakeMyTrip (Internet)
Sanjeev Bikhchandani - Info Edge/Naukri (Internet)

I'm sure there are many more amazing Indian entrepreneurs. Who did I miss? Which Indian entrepreneur do you admire?

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