5 takeaways from Forbes India rich list: Of 12 new faces, the richest is Sunil Vaswani

E-commerce is making waves. If anybody has any doubt, he just needs to look at the Forbes’ India rich list published on Thursday.

The list of 100 top Indian billionaires, compiled using shareholding and financial data obtained from families and individuals, stock exchanges, analysts and regulators, features Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of e-commerce giant Flipkart, for the first time. Ranked at the 86th in the list, this is a significant achievement for the two, considering their company was started only in 2008.

But that’s not the only noteworthy thing about the list.

Here are 5 key takeaways from the list:

1) Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries (that owns Firstpost publisher Network18 group), is the country’s richest for the ninth year in a row. His net worth stands at $18.9 billion, down $4.7 billion or 20 percent over the last year. The reason for the decline is the fall in stock prices of his company after global oil price fall.

2) There are 12 new faces in the list. Of them, the richest is Dubai-based Sunil Vaswani. He is the chairman of the Stallion group, which has interests in automobiles, commodities, food, agri business, manufacturing, home/office automation, telecom solutions, insurance, shipping and vehicle leasing. The Dubai-based group with $3.72 billion in revenues has major operations in West Africa, according to this report in Forbes.

3) As many as 10 of the billionaires in the list witnessed a fall of over $1 billion in wealth each the last one year. One among them is ArcelorMittal’s chairman Lakshmi Mittal, whose net worth dipped to $4.6 billion and dropped three ranks with a net worth of $11.2 billion. He was ranked eighth on the list.

4) There are many who also gained during the year. Cyrus Poonawalla, who owns vaccine maker Serum Institute, saw the steepest rise in wealth - from $6.2 billion to $7.9 billion. He is ranked ninth on the list. Poonawalla recently made headlines after he paid Rs 750 crore to buy Lincoln House, a 50,000 square foot mansion in South Mumbai.

5) Another new entrant in the list is IndiGo airline co-founder Rakesh Gangwal. With a net worth of $1.6 billion, he is placed at 70th position. IndiGo, which was one of only two airlines to turn in a profit when its peers made losses, is gearing up for its Rs 2,500 crore IPO. According to the magazine, he has an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and also an MBA from Wharton. Meanwhile, Rahul Bhatia, with whom Gangwal tied up to set up IndiGo, has witnessed a rise in net worth to $2.4 billion and is up 12 positions to 38th in the list.

With inputs from PTI