On November 8th 2016, Demonetization took away a large chunk of currency and wealth of many a rich men. However, the richest billionaires got richer. The policy had little or no effect on their value or wealth. Let’s take a quick look at who gained how much.
- Mukesh Ambani – The richest billionaire in India got richer by nearly 20 billion USD. The chairman of Reliance Industries saw his wealth jump up by 19.8 billion dollars. That is Rs. 1.28 lakh crores in the fiscal ending March 2017. His personal wealth is up by 6 billion USD. His total net worthis of 28.6 billion dollars.
- Laxmi Mittal – FY 17 also saw a good recovery in the steel sector. As a result, steel king Laxmi Mittal added 1.5 billion USD to his personal wealth, which grew by over 10.4 % in a single year. He is second in the list of billionaires with a wealth of 15.9 USD.
- Dilip Shanghavi – He is the third richest with a personal wealth of 14.7 billion USD. This growth comes in spite of the company Sun Pharma’s shares trading at a lower rate in comparison to previous year.
- Pallonji Mistry – The construction magnate added only 6 billion USD to his wealth. He has a net worth of 14.6 million USD.
- Azim Premji – His wealth grew at a rate of 15.3%. His personal wealth increased by 1.9 billion USD. His total wealth now is USD 14.1 billion.
- Shiv Nadar of HCL added USD 1.1 billion to his net worth showing a growth of 9.3%. His total wealth is $13.3 billion USD.
- Cyrus Poonawala – The bio-tech billionaire is now worth 9 billion USD, thus having his personal wealth growing by 12.2 %.
- Uday Kotak –He added 1.8 billion USD to his personal wealth. His net worth is 8.9 billion USD. An exponential growth of 25.3%
- Kumar Mangalam Birla – He witnessed the highest growth rate of up to 32.1% in his personal worth. He added 1.9 billion USD to grow his wealth to 8 billion USD.
- Gautam Adani – His wealth grew at a whopping 40.5 % making him the fastest growing billionaire. He added 1.9 billion USD to grow his wealth to 6.5 billion USD.
Across the world, Germany has displaced India to rank third in the list of largest billionaires. The only woman who made it to the Indian billionaires list is the bio-tech magnate – Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw with a total wealth of 12,900 crore rupees