Amidst the gracious presence of Sri Sri RaviShankar, Forbes India rich list for the year 2009 was announced in the city.



An upsurge in the stock market in the past year has seen an ascent in the economy growing at 6% boosting the net worth of India’s rich lot. Mukesh Ambani tops this year’s list at a whopping $32 billion. The combined net worth of India’s richest people is US$276 billion, almost a quarter of the country’s GDP.

With the stock market boom the rich seems to get richer in the country as 52 billionaires were listed this year which is double of last year’s 27 billionaires. Mukesh Ambani’s net worth has seen an increase of 54% from nearly $21 billion last year. Trailing behind him are Lakshmi Mittal with a net worth of $30 billion, up 46 % from $20.5 billion, and Anil Ambani whose net worth of $17.5 billion is 40% higher than before is in third place. Though the top ten positions remain largely unchanged, there are some shifts in fortunes across the list. Sunil Mittal has moved down from the forth position to the eighth putting Azim Premji in fourth place. The Ruia brothers with a net worth of $13.6 billion have made it to number five this year. Adi Godrej has moved out of the top 10 to the number 12 position. The richest newcomers are two brothers from Torrent Power, Sudhir and Samir Mehta ranked at 23. Well, lot of shifts this year around only making bold the huge structure called the stock market that can get largely unpredictable. It’s all a matter of time. Recession or no recession the rich are up there and surely know the art to handle the green thing tactfully.


Indrajit Gupta, Editor of Forbes India said, “The substantial jump in net worth is clear evidence that entrepreneurial capitalism is alive and kicking in India. What’s more, the growth in wealth creation has been broad-based. Entrepreneurs from a wide variety of sectors comprise the list.” The list is an indicator of how India’s billionaires have done better than their counterparts in other parts of the world.

The top ten richest in India are:
1. Mukesh Ambani $32 billion
2. Lakshmi Mittal $ 30 billion
3. Anil Ambani $17.5 billion
4. Azim Premji $14.9 billion
5. Sashi & Ravi Ruia $13.6 billion
6. KP Singh $13.5 billion
7. Savithri Jindal $12 billion
8. Sunil Mittal $8.2 billion
9. Kumar Birla $7.8 billion
10. Gautam Adani $6.4 billion

In a time when Indo Sino relationships are strained the following would be a statstic that would give Indians reason to smile. The Forbes India cover story highlights interesting differences between the rich in India and China. The hundred richest Indians are worth $276 billion, their Chinese counterparts have a net worth of $176 billion. The three riches Indians are worth $79.5 billion, it takes 24 Chinese billionaires to be worth $80 billion.

His Holiness Sri Sri Ravishankar when asked a question about wealth said “There are different kinds of wealth, it depends which wealth we are talking about, there is the wealth of wisdom, there is wealth of inner peace then there is materialistic wealth, now if you don’t have the first two and have only the last then it’s as good as dressing up a corpse and putting make-up on it. It’s of no use. We need to strive to be rich in different ways.”