Crorepatis of tech businesses shine in the India rich list, VSS wallet the most loaded

It is that time of the year to read out the roll call of billionaires. Whetting our obsessive appetite and curiosity about the rich and famous, Forbes released its 2017 India rich list that saw Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani stay put at the top slot for the 10th year in a row with a net worth of $38 billion.

Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma (VSS) , a new entrant to the Forbes list, managed to sneak into the 99th position with a net worth of $1.47 billion.

Earlier this week, Hurun Research in its 2017 India Rich List, listed out the crorepatis of the Indian startup ecosystem. Occupying the first position is Divyank Turakhia of Media.net with a net worth of Rs 11, 500 crore.

Interestingly, Kunal Bahl, Co-founder of the beleaguered Snapdeal, slipped off the list as did Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola.

The others from the Indian startup ecosystem included in the Hurun list include Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Flipkart’s Bansals, Infoedge’s Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Mu Sigma’s Ambiga Subramanian, and Byju’s Byju Raveendran among others.

It is worth noting that these self-made rich are first-time entrepreneurs running tech businesses to be rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty of the corporate and family business world.

Here are some quick facts from the report:

• There are a total of 617 business tycoons and startup founders in the Hurun rich list with a cut off of Rs 1000 crores as compared to 339 last year. The cutoff for the Top 100 has more than doubled to Rs 8,400 crores since 2013.
• Led by Divyank Turakhia of Media.net, there are five self-made individuals under 40 in the list.
• All the under 40 self-made listers derive their wealth from new technology businesses.
• Forty-two-year-old Ambiga Subramanian is the youngest self-made woman in the list. She sold her shares in Mu Sigma, the data analytics unicorn that she co-founded with her former husband Dhiraj Rajaram.
• The number of women in the list increased by 300 percent with 53 entries this year, while the number of ‘self-made’ women quadrupled from two to eight in the list.
• The richest women are Savitri Jindal, 66, of OP Jindal Group with Rs 46,500 crore, followed by Smitha V Crishna of Godrej, Indu Jain Chairperson of Time Group. The richest self-made woman in India is biotechnology queen Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon with Rs 15,400 crore.
• Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru added 78, 52, and 23 new faces respectively, reaffirming their ‘Big 3 city status’.
• The number of dollar billionaires has increased to 136 from 126 last year. The inaugural Hurun India Rich List in 2012 had 59 billionaires.
• Thirty-four individuals in the list are under the age of 40; 28 in the ‘under 40’ have inherited their wealth.
• The combined wealth of India’s richest is a staggering $640 billion, equating to 1/4^th of India’s GDP last year and similar to the GDPs of Switzerland ($660 billion), and combined GDP of South Africa ($317 billion) & Israel ($340 billion).
• The wealth calculations are a snapshot of net worth of living individuals as of July 31, 2017, when the rate of exchange to the US dollar was Rs 64.1.