Forbes India rich list 2019: Mukesh Ambani retains top spot, Adani second

Overall, the total wealth of the tycoons on the 2019 Forbes India Rich List shrank 8 per cent to $452 bn from a year ago.

Business Standard : Reliance Industries' Chairman Mukesh Ambani has bagged the top spot in Forbes' list of the richest Indians for the year 2019 in what the American business magazine said was 'a challenging year' for the Indian economy. This is the 12th time in a row that Ambani -- whose wealth swelled to $51.4 billion this year -- has topped the list.

"He added $4.1 billion to his net worth as Jio, the three-year-old telecom unit of his Reliance Industries, became one of India’s biggest mobile carriers with 340 million subscribers," Forbes said.

The effect of a slowing economy was visible on the list. Overall, the total wealth of tycoons on the 2019 Forbes India Rich List shrank 8 per cent to $452 billion from a year ago and more than half of India’s 100 richest saw a decline in their net worth, the magazine said.

Despite this, some tycoons saw big gains to their fortunes.

One of them is infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani, who jumped eight spots to no.2 this year with a net worth of $15.7 billion on the back of a permission he secured after a nine-year wait to start work on an Australian coal mine. He has also ventured into a slew of new businesses from airports to data centers.

Ambani and Adani were followed by the Hinduja brothers (net worth of $15.6 billion), Pallonji Mistry ($15 billion), and banker Uday Kotak ($14.8 billion).

Naazneen Karmali, Asia Wealth Editor and India Editor of Forbes Asia, said, "While India's slowing economy took a toll on the combined wealth of the nation's 100 richest this year, there were some who defied the odds to charge ahead.. It won't be long before they bounce back."

Six newcomers made their debut on this year’s list: The Singh family (no. 41, $3.18 billion), who inherited the fortune of pharma magnate Samprada Singh, founder of Alkem Laboratories, who died in July this year; Byju Raveendran (no. 72, $1.91 billion), the 38-year-old founder of fast-rising edtech unicorn Byju’s; Mahendra Prasad (no. 81, $1.77 billion) of Aristo Pharmaceuticals; Manohar Lal and Madhusudan Agarwal (No. 86, $1.7 billion) of Delhi-headquartered Haldiram Snacks; Rajesh Mehra (no. 95, $1.5 billion), whose family owns the popular sanitary ware brand Jaquar, and Sandeep Engineer (no. 98, $1.45 billion) of Astral Poly Technik.

On the flip side, tycoons linked to autos and consumer goods suffered from weak consumer sentiment. Autoparts maker Vivek Chaand Sehgal’s net worth more than halved to $2.45 billion.

Adani's new 'big money maker' plan: Selling data services to Amazon, Google

It's an approach that's been a hallmark of Adani's empire: Pick a hot new industry -- especially one favored by the government -- build the infrastructure, and keep going till you hit the top.

A string of successful bets on ports, mining and commodities helped transform Gautam Adani from a nondescript diamond trader into a tycoon with a net worth of $10 billion.

Now the Indian businessman is setting his sight on what he believes could become another big money maker: Selling data storage services to companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

India’s government is weighing a new law that would require data to be stored locally, and his conglomerate Adani Enterprises Ltd. has said it expects to invest Rs 700 billion ($10.2 billion) to build data parks in a southern state over the next two decades.

The billionaire’s hope is to capitalize on demand from foreign technology companies, who are expanding in India as the use of smartphones and Internet surges.

If the proposed law goes through “it will explode data storage requirements, and that will need capacity,” Adani said in a rare interview in New Delhi. “This will be a multi-billion-dollar project that will bring in the Googles and the Amazons of the world.”

It’s an approach that’s been a hallmark of Adani’s empire: Pick a hot new industry -- especially one favored by the government -- build the infrastructure, and keep going till you hit the top. Much like China, India has sought to draw more private investment to ramp up its infrastructure as it attempts to double GDP to $5 trillion over coming years.

‘Nation building’

When the Indian government pushed for gas projects in cities for cooking and transportation, Adani’s group bid for and won many licenses, a move that could make it the biggest player in gas retailing. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to develop local manufacturing of defense equipment, Adani quickly built the capacity to supply the military by going on an aggressive shopping spree of defense contractors.

And when Adani’s group decided to get involved in operations of airports, it bid almost double its main competitors in some cases. A clean sweep in the bidding process is set to add six airfields to the business overnight.

“Our main goal is nation building through infrastructure,” the billionaire said. “The Adani Group has always focused on businesses in line [with] the government’s vision.”

Business Standard