Hyderabad: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chief Mukesh Ambani is the ninth richest person in the world, having a net worth of $67 billion, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020.
"The only Asian in the Top 10, Ambani's wealth increased mainly on the back of a good performance in his telecom business," the Hurun Rich List said. Ambani, 62, maintained a place in the top 10 for the second time after a $13 billion or 24 per cent surge in his wealth to $67billion.
Ambani is restructuring Reliance Industries to facilitate the planned strategic investments in group businesses - Reliance Jio, Reliance Retail, refining and petrochemicals. The conglomerate aims to be a zero net debt company in 18 months and is in discussion to sell 20 per cent oil-to-chemicals business to Saudi Aramco, at an enterprise value of $75 billion. RIL became the first Indian company to hit the milestone of achieving Rs 10 lakh crore market capitalisation.
The list also mentioned that India rose to 3rd with 137 billionaires, 33 more than last year. Mumbai is the billionaire capital with 50, followed by New Delhi with 30. There are a total of 169 Indian billionaires, of which 32 are based outside of India.
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In the previous year Mukesh Ambani was at the eighth position in the global ranking and this year he slipped a rank lower to become the ninth richest person in the world.
Indian billionaires appeared in Hurun Rich List 2020 - Gautham Adani the Chairman of Adani Group, saw his wealth rocket up by US$ 7.1 bn to US$ 17bn, after the demerger of his renewable generation and city gas distribution businesses.
- NR Narayana Murthy the co-founder of Infosys, worth US$ 2.3bn, saw his son-in-law Rishi Sunak, 39, in February appointed to become the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, the most powerful person in the British government after the prime minister.
- Sunil Mittal the founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises & family, saw his wealth rise to US$ 3.5bn, up US$1bn, propelled by speculations of the Indian telecom market becoming a duopoly, led by Jio and Airtel.
- Radhakishan Damani, of grocery retail chain Avenue Supermarts, whose wealth increased 80% to US$ 10.6bn after his flagship company logged a 53% year-on-year rise in standalone profit in Q3 of current fiscal. He has a super market chain DMart whose IPO in March 2017 made him India's retail King.
- Uday Kotak, 60, of Kotak Mahindra Bank shot straight into the Top 100 list with US$ 15bn. Kotak’s share price hit an all-time high after RBI cleared plans for dilution of promoters' shareholding.
(Inputs from IANS)
