Adani earned over Rs 1,000 crore daily this year

India produced 179 more super-rich people this year led by Adani Group's Gautam Adani who amassed a whopping wealth of  Rs 365,700 crore or more than Rs 1,000 crore daily, and the number of such individuals has crossed the 1,000-mark.

Geographically, five more cities are home to super-rich taking the total number of super-rich cities to 119 and these 1,007 individuals cumulatively added 51 per cent more wealth in 2021.

The average wealth increased by 25 per cent this year that also saw the livelihoods of thousands of people being hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Hurun India-IIFL Wealth rich list published on Thursday, there are 1,007 people -- 13 of them with more than Rs 1 lakh crore of wealth -- in the country with over Rs 1,000 crore wealth.

The tenth Hurun India rich list has Mukesh Ambani topping it for the 10th year in a row with Rs 7,18,000 crore wealth -- only 9 per cent up over 2020 -- followed by the Adani family with Rs 505,900 crore, up 261 per cent from Rs 140,200 crore, making him also the second richest Asian, earning Rs 1,000 crore a day over the last year or Rs 3,65,700 crore in the year.

Third in the list is Shiv Nadar & family of HCL with Rs 236,600 crore, up 67 per cent, followed by the SP Hinduja & family with Rs 220,000 crore up 53 per cent, LN Mittal & Family of ArcelorMittal with Rs 174,400 crore up 187 per cent and Cyrus Poonawalla & family at the sixth slot with Rs 163,700 crore, which is up 74 per cent.

Anas Rahman Junaid, managing director of Hurun India, said the wealth calculation is up to September 15, 2021.

He also said the last decade saw the number of the rich jumping 10 times from just under 100 in 2011 to 1,007 this year.

At this rate, over the next five years, I expect the list to grow to 3,000 individuals and the country adding another 250 dollar billionaires over the next five years and rival the US within a decade, he added.

The top ten list has four new faces, led by steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal of ArcelorMittal, Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group, along with California based Jay Chaudhry of cloud computing and cyber security firm Zscaler.

Among the women, the third generation Godrej family member Smita V Crishna is the richest woman in the list with Rs 31,300 crore (down 3 per cent), followed by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (who is also the richest self-made woman in the list) with Rs 28,200 crore, down 11 per cent.

Mumbai justifies its name as the financial capital being home to 255 of the 1,007 super-rich creating 38 more in the year, followed by the national capital by adding 39 to take the number to 167 and Bengaluru with 85, adding 18 more in the year.

According to Junaid, over the past decade, the rich-listers have cumulatively added Rs 2,020 crore per day -- making it the fastest wealth creation in the country.

More interestingly, 13 individuals are worth more than Rs 1 lakh crore each and eight of them were made in the reporting year only.

Of the 1,007, rich, 237 are dollar billionaires, up 59 from last year, and four times in the past decade.

Sectorally, pharma topped the list with 40 super-rich, led by the Poonawallas, followed by chemicals and petrochemicals with 27 and software minting 22 dollar billionaires.

Of the 100 super-rich, 13 were born in the 1990s and all of them are self-made and the list is topped by a 23-year old co-founder of payments app Bharatpe's Shashvat Nakrani.

Geographically, five more cities (Rajkot, Surat, Faridabad, Ludhiana and Agra) are home to the super-rich, taking the number of cities to 119 and cumulative wealth rose 51 per cent, while average wealth increased by 25 per cent.

Of the 1,007, 894 saw their wealth increase or stay the same, of which 229 are new faces, while 113 saw their wealth drop and 51 got dropped off the list.

As per the list, as many as 237 are billionaires, up 58 from last year.

Chemicals and software produced the greatest number of new entrants to the list, but pharma is still the number one and has contributed 130 entrants to the list.

The number of women on the list is 47 this year, up from just five a decade ago.

The youngest ten years ago was 37 and today is 23, indicating the impact of the start-up revolution.

Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters