India adds 40 of 2020's 412 new billionaires; Elon Musk's wealth rockets into stratosphere

At least forty Indians entered the billionaires' club in the pandemic-stricken 2020 to take the number of those in the coveted list to 177 people, as per a report by Harun Report Global. 

As per PTI, Hurun Report Global's managing director and chief researcher Anas Rahman Junaid said Indian wealth creation is dominated by cyclical or traditional industries compared to tech-driven wealth creation in the US and China.

India adds 40 billionaires in pandemic-hit 2020

Mukesh Ambani continued to be the wealthiest Indian with a net worth of USD 83 billion. The head of Reliance Industries witnessed a 24 percent jump in fortunes and climbed up one spot to be the eighth richest globally, as per the Hurun Global Rich List. Gautam Adani saw his wealth almost doubling to USD 32 billion in 2020 and climbed 20 places to be the 48th richest person globally and the second wealthiest Indian. His brother Vinod's wealth grew 128 percent to USD 9.8 billion.

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IT giant HCL's Shiv Nadar was the third wealthiest Indian at $27 billion while some peers in the tech industry dominated the list of fastest-growing wealth. Jay Chaudhry of software company Zcaler saw a 274 percent rise in net worth to $13 billion during the year while Byju Raveendran and family saw a 100 percent increase in its wealth to $2.8 billion, the report said.

Diversified corporate house Mahindra Group's head Anand Mahindra and family also saw a 100 per cent increase in wealth to $2.4 billion, it said. Among those who saw a decline in their net worth during the year was Acharya Balkrishna of Patanjali Ayurved at $3.6 billion, down 32 percent.

Elon Musk's fortune rockets into stratosphere

The Harun Global Rich List reveals that the world added 412 total billionaires in the same period, at the rate of 8 billionaires per week.

It puts Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk at the very top, with Musk adding a monstrous $151 billion to overtake Amazon's Jeff Bezos who himself managed to add $49 billion to his fortune and is now worth $189 billion. Next up are Bernard of LVMH, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg are next up, in third, fourth and fifth positions.

In terms of cities, Beijing has the most billionaires in the world, followed by Shanghai and New York in third.  

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(With PTI Inputs)