Mukesh Ambani races past Gautam Adani as richest Indian: only Indian in top 10 in 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List

• RIL CMD Mukesh Ambani not only has recaptured the top spot on the list of richest Indians, he has lost much less wealth compared to Gautama Adani.
• Ambani is now the only Indian in the top ten of the 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List.
• A total of 41 Indian billionaires saw their wealth decrease by at least $1 billion compared to last year, losing a cumulative wealth of $122.7 billion.
• Globally, five billionaires fell off the list each week.
• Mumbai, the financial capital of India, also accounted for a third of India’s total billionaires, followed by Delhi.

CMD Mukesh of Reliance Industries Ambani has raced past Gautam Adani to emerge as the richest Indian in 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List. While both Ambani and Adani saw their wealth erode year on year, Adani ended up losing 35% of his wealth due to the Hindenburg saga, while Ambani lost less with 20% between 2022 and 2023’s Hurun Rich List.

Adani, who was second for a while richest person in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, saw his wealth plummet from $119 billion on January 24 to $57.2 billion today.

On the other hand, Mukesh Ambani, who also witnessed a drop of $21 billion in his wealth, stood out as the richest Indian and Asian. He is also the only Indian in the top ten richest people in the world on the 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List.

Adani also lost the most wealth of the top ten billionaires in India.

Even when Adani was the richest Indian, Ambani’s Reliance Industries topped the list of Hurun’s most valuable companies.

Biggest power losers

Underlining how bad the past year was for billionaires, the top nine billionaires in terms of wealth erosion lost a total of $339 billion, which is only slightly lower than Hong Kong’s GDP of $361 billion.

A total of 41 Indian billionaires saw their wealth decrease by at least $1 billion compared to last year. These billionaires lost a total of $122.7 billion during this period, putting India in third position, behind only China and the US.

Not just India, billionaires are declining globally

However, it’s not just Adani and Ambani who’ve lost wealth this year — according to the list, the world lost 5 billionaires every week for the past year. The number of billionaires has fallen by 269, from 3,381 last year to 3,112 now.

Not only the number of billionaires, even the cumulative wealth of these billionaires has decreased by 10% to $13.7 trillion.

In all, nine of the top ten Indian billionaires lost their wealth, according to the Hurun rich list. Only Cyrus Poonawalla, the chairman and general manager of the biotechnology company Serum Institute of India, managed to grow his wealth.

Poonawalla has also emerged as the richest healthcare billionaire in the world.

Interestingly, it’s not all bleak for billionaires – India has added 15 new billionaires to its list, the richest of which is Rekha Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, the wife of the late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who was also known as the ‘Big Bull’.

A third of India’s billionaires live in Mumbai, Delhi a distant second

Mumbai, the financial capital of India, also emerged as the top source of billionaires, accounting for a third of the total number of billionaires in India. According to the Hurun rich list, 66 out of 187 Indian billionaires are based in Mumbai.

Mumbai also dominates when it comes to the top ten billionaires in India, accounting for five out of ten. Interestingly, two of these ten billionaires live in London.

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