Pharma makes most super rich in India

Mumbai: The pharmaceutical sector has produced the most number of ultra high net-worth individuals in India, accounting for almost 16 per cent of the total 132 wealthy Indians featured in the latest Hurun Global Rich List India report.

According to Hurun, there are 132 Indians enjoying a minimum networth of $1 billion and above. Out of this, 21 billionaires are from the pharma sector. Dilip Shanghvi, the founder of Sun Pharmaceuticals, is the third most richest Indian after Mukesh Ambani and London based S.P. Hinduja & family.

Mr Shanghvi with a net worth of Rs 99,000 crore is the biggest pharma billionaire followed by Cyrus Poonawalla (Rs 75,400 crore), the chairman of Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers.

The manufacturing sector turned out to be the second biggest contributor of dollar billionaires from India followed by technology, media and telecommunication (TMT) sector.  While both the sectors have 13 billionaires each, manufacturing scored over TMT in terms of the value of total net-worth.  

When it comes to generating wealth, women are not far behind their male counterparts. There are 9 women  billionaires from India with Savitri Jindal topping the list with Rs 31,500 crore.

The report pointed out that the combined wealth of 132 Indian billionaires increased to Rs 26.90 lakh crore, up 16 per cent from last year. There were also 27 new dollar billionaires from India. With a net worth of Rs 24,900 crore, Acharya Balakrishna of Patanjali Ayurveda, tops the list followed by Nadir Godrej and Smitha V Crishna.

Due to the government’s policy shift towards a cashless economy, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm with a net worth of Rs 10,300 crore is now the 79th richest Indian. Divyank Turakhia of Directi who successfully sold his company media.net to Miteno, a Chinese conglomerate at a valuation of $1 billion is the 99th richest dollar billionaire in India.