More faces join India’s Rs 200 crore plus club

India has the fastest growing number of Ultra High Networth Individuals (UHNIs), holding more than $30 million or Rs 200 crore) growing at 73 per cent, followed by Egypt at 66 per cent, Vietnam at 64.6 per cent and China at 58 per cent, says a Wealth Report 2020 by Knight Frank.

There were 5,13,244 UHNIs worldwide in 2019. The over 27 per cent, five-year growth forecast would take the total to 6,49,331. The US tops the rankings with 2,40,575 UHNIs, China is second with 61,000 and Germany third with 23,000. India with 6,000 UHNIs has a little less than 10 per cent of China’s numbers.

Of the top 20 fastest growing countries, six are in Asia (led by India), five are in Europe (led by Sweden with 47 per cent growth) and three in Africa (led by Egypt with a 66 per cent growth). A booming stock market, rising aspirations of the middle class, political stability, heavy spending by government in infrastructure, a 5-plus GDP growth rate, and rise of start-ups and investments by venture capitalists are factors.

Millionaire to billionaire

The average age to earn the first million is 37 years, and 51 on an average to join the billionaire club, says data-projection by www.visualcapitalist.com that analysed data from Forbes Top 100 Richest in the World,

LinkedIn and Wikipedia. The technology industry recorded the quickest growth of billionaires - an average of 7.3 years, compared to 10-15 years in energy, automobiles, 15 years in fashion. Getting to a billion may take 20 years in real estate, food and beverage industry, while finance and banking can take up to 20-25 years, a visualcapitalist analysis showed.

Leaders of technology companies dominate the top 10 Forbes Richest list, led by Jeff Bezos of Amazon who went from millionaire to billionaire in two years, Bill Gates of Microsoft took 5 years, Mark Zuckerberg took one year, Larry Ellison of Oracle took seven years, Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founders of Google took five years, and Jack Ma of Alibaba took ten years.

Non-technology billionaires took relatively longer with Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway took 26 years, Bernard Arnault of LVMH took 21 years, Michael Bloomberg took 21 years, and Robson Walton of Walmart took 14 years.

The Forbes 2019 List of 400 Richest Americans features seven wealthiest American billionaires of Indian origin, mostly from the technology sector. With a net worth of $3.8 billion, IndiGo co-founder Rakesh Gangwal tops the list of Indian American billionaires, whereas Austin-based Niranjan Sheth with a net worth of $2.2 billion is the youngest richest billionaire of Indian origin.

Cyber tycoon Jay Chaudhry from San Jose is a newcomer on the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans. The CEO of Arista Networks, Jayshree Ullal, the only Indian-American woman in the global club of billionaires with a wealth of $1.43 billion, has been dropped from Forbes’ 2019 list.India is now home to 138 billionaires putting it in third place globally, Mukesh Ambani is topping the list with over $66 billion (Rs 4,90,050 crore) in net worth, making Rs 7 crore every hour. Oyo's Ritesh Agarwal is the youngest billionaire of India at 26 years.

Over 1,800 businessmen saw their wealth increase of whioch 479 are new faces. China led the pack with 182, followed by the US with 59 and India with 44. New faces came from tech (74), manufacturing (52), real estate (41), pharma (43), retail (30) and food & beverages (30).

India added three billionaires every month in 2019, taking the tally to 138 (the tally goes up to 170 if India-origin billionaires are included). India features at the third position globally, with China and the US occupying the first and second spot with 799 and 626 billionaires respectively.

The world has added 480 billionaires in 2019, adding more than one a day, while China added more than three a week. Mumbai, with 50 billionaires, was home to over a third of India’s richest, making it the ninth richest city globally, followed by New Delhi with 30, Bengaluru with 17 and Ahmedabad with 12.

Billionaires based in Mumbai control around $218 billion (Rs 16,18,650 crore) of wealth between them, followed by New Delhi holding $76 billion (Rs 5,64,300 crore), those in Bengaluru worth $42 billion (Rs 3,11,850 crore), while those in Ahmedabad are worth $36 billion (Rs 2,67,300 crore) and the seven in Hyderabad worth $13 billion (Rs 96,525 crore).

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