Mukesh Ambani joins Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg in the top 10 billionaires' club
Mukesh Ambani gained $5.3 billion as Reliance Industries' stock increased after it became net debt-free. Ambani is now the ninth richest person in the world.
Reliance Industries Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani, who's Asia's richest person, has entered the world's top 10 billionaires' club for the first time.
Ambani's wealth rose $5.3 billion to reach $64.6 billion (or Rs 4.9 lakh crore) on Sunday, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaire list. Ambani ranks ninth on the list, marginally ahead of Google Co-founder Larry Page, whose fortune is worth $64.5 billion.
Following RIL's Rs 1.69 lakh crore fundraise (through funding in Jio Platforms and a rights issue) in the last two months, its stock has increased 6.5 percent. The petroleum-to-telecom conglomerate is presently valued at $88 billion, and is net debt-free.
Mukesh Ambani | Image: Flickr
Ambani is now a part of a coveted club that includes the world's ultra-rich.
Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos leads the list of billionaires with a net worth of $160.1 billion. He's followed by Microsoft Founder Bill Gates ($108.6 billion), LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault ($102.8 billion), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ($87.9 billion), Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett ($71.4 billion), and others.
The second richest Indian on the Forbes list is Radhakishan Damani, the founder of hypermarket chain DMart. He's ranked at 82nd, with a net worth of $16.2 billion.
Incidentally, Ambani and Damani are the only two Indians in the top 100.
Other notable Indians
IT pioneer and HCL Founder Shiv Nadar (rank #105), Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani (rank #121), and Bharti Airtel Founder and Chairman Sunil Mittal (rank #160) follow with fortunes of $14.5 billion, $13.5 billion, and $10.8 billion, respectively.
Among the recent Indian entrants in the billionaires' club is Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran.
Byju Raveendran
The 39-year-old debuted in the Forbes Billionaires List in 2020 with an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion. His $10 billion startup is witnessing one of the biggest growth curves in recent times riding on the COVID-19-led boom in edtech.
Apoorva Mehta, the Indian origin founder and CEO of Instacart (San Francisco-based online grocery service) is the newest Forbes billionaire. His net worth is estimated to be $1.2 billion, while his company is valued at $13.7 billion.
Interestingly, after the coronavirus-led bloodbath in global stock markets, a record 1,062 billionaires saw their wealth decline, while 267 of them dropped out of the coveted club.
The total combined net worth of billionaires in 2020 stood at $8 trillion, falling from $8.7 trillion in 2019, Forbes revealed.
"The richest people on Earth are not immune to the coronavirus. As the pandemic tightened its grip on Europe and America, global equity markets imploded, tanking many fortunes... Of the billionaires who remain, 51 percent are poorer than they were last year," it stated.
Edited by Megha Reddy