Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Jio Infocomm, Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel and Kumar Birla of Idea Cellular are the top Indian billionaires — from the telecom industry — in Forbes list.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani topped 84 Indian billionaires in Forbes 2016 list of the world’s richest people.
Mukesh Ambani is currently in the process of rolling out his $20 billion 4G project across the country, competing with Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India.
Mukesh Ambani with a net worth of $19.3 billion was ranked 36th among world’s 1,810 billionaires with an aggregate net worth of $6.48 trillion, down from $7.05 trillion last year.
Kumar Mangalam Birla with net worth of $6.1 billion is in the 8 position in India and 196 globally.
Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel has a net worth of $5.7 billion. Sunil Mittal is in the 9 position for India and 219 globally.
Anil Ambani, the brother of Mukesh Ambani, is not part of Forbes list.
Bill Gates with a net worth of $75 billion has topped the Forbes list for 17 of the last 22 years was followed by Spanish clothing retailer Amancio Ortega, best known for the Zara fashion chain, with Warren Buffett remaining in the third spot.
The US led with the greatest number of billionaires, with 540, followed by China with 251, Germany with 120, India with 84 and Russia with 77.
China had the most of 198 newcomer billionaires, adding 70 to the list. Thirty-three newcomers were from the US, 8 from India and 28 from Germany.
Notable newcomers included Flipkart cofounders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (No. 1476) of India, IANS reported.
India’s top ten: 1 (world ranking 36) Mukesh Ambani $19.3 bn; 2 (44) Dilip Shanghvi $16.7 bn; 3 (55) Azim Premji $15 bn; 4 (88) Shiv Nadar $11.1 bn; 5 (133) Cyrus Poonawalla $8.5 bn; 6 (135) Lakshmi Mittal $8.4 bn; 7 (184) Uday Kotak $6.3 bn; 8 (196) Kumar Birla $6.1 bn; 9 (219) Sunil Mittal $5.7 bn; 10 (233) Desh Bandhu Gupta $5.5 bn.
Telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu (No. 4) dropped two spots, and his net worth decreased to $50 billion from $77.1 billion last year.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (No. 5) moved up to the fifth from the fifteenth spot last year; his net worth increased to $45.2 billion.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (No. 6) moved into the top 10 for the first time. He was the biggest gainer with his fortune going up by $11.2 billion for a total net worth of $44.6 billion. He is the sixth richest in the world.
The biggest loser was Helu.
