JOIN USWhile Silicon Valley added 23 new billionaires to the Forbes Global Billionaires List 2015 published on Monday, despite the hoopla over eCommerce, no entrepreneurs from the sector have broken through the ranks of those from India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru.
It’s still dominated by well-known names from the IT sector, led by IT czar Azim Premji. There’s, however, a reduction in the number of billionaires from the City at 10, down by three from last year.
With 290 new billionaires being added to the global list, taking the total number to a record 1,826, Forbes estimates their wealth at an unprecedented $7.05 trillion.
Azim Premji, who owns India’s third-largest software outsourcing company Wipro, has an estimated net worth of $19.4 billion which puts him at the 48th position, up from $16.4 bn and the 61st rank in 2014. Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy and family occupy the 894th position with a total net worth of $2.1 billion. Murthy, who came back from retirement in 2013 to reboot Infosys, is now the 53rd richest man in India and was in the 1,046th position in the Forbes Billionaires List in 2014.
S Gopalakrishnan and family, another co-founder of Infosys in the list, was executive vice-chairman until June when he announced his retirement after 33 years with the company. His total net worth of $1.9 billion puts him 1,044th in the list. He is the 64th wealthiest man in the country and occupied the 1,154th slot in the Forbes list in 2014.
Ranjan Pai, a medical practitioner who heads the Manipal Education & Medical Group with 16 hospitals, has an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, and is placed at the 1,118th position. He is credited with exporting Indian education and healthcare to Malaysia, Dubai, Antigua and Nepal. He is currently India’s 57th richest man and was placed 1,210th in the 2014 list.
City’s property magnate Jitendra Virwani, who owns Embassy Property Developments, is now at the 1,190th position, with an estimated wealth of $1.6 billion. Besides building IT parks and office towers with tenants like IBM, Yahoo and Fidelity, Embassy has signed on Flipkart as a tenant for three million square feet of space in a tech park called Embassy Tech Village. He is currently the 62nd richest man in the country and occupied the 1,565th position in the 2014 Forbes list.
Co-founder and former chief executive of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, and his family is placed 1,105th in the list with a total wealth of $1.8 billion. He was in the 1,210th position in 2014 and is currently the 66th richest person in the country.
V G Siddhartha who owns 1,640 cafes in the brand name of Café Coffee Day is now placed 1605 the position with net worth of $1.2 Billion. He is now the 75th richest man in India. K Dinesh, a director of Infosys for three decades, is placed at the 1,500th position with a net worth $1.3 billion
S D Shibulal, the co-founder of Infosys who stepped down as chief executive in July 2014 after running the company for three years, is placed 1,605 in the list, with a net worth of $1.2 billion.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder and CMD of the $480-million revenue Biocon, India’s largest publicly traded biopharma firm, now holds a wealth of $1 billion and holds a position of 1,741 in the list. She is placed 81st in India’s richest list. Irfan Razack, G M Rao, and Rajesh Mehta who were in the list last year, no longer figure in the list.
Collectively, the billionaires saw their wealth increase by $650 bn to $7.05 tn. China produced 71 new billionaires out of the total 290. Out of the total 90 from India, 29 are newcomers. Evan Spiegel, the 24-year-old co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, is the youngest new billionaire with a total wealth of worth $1.5bn. His fellow co-founder Bobby Murphy, 26, also has a $1.5-bn fortune.