Indian Billionaire Stats

There were only two billionaires with a combined wealth of $3.2bn in India in the mid-1990s.By 2012, there were 46 of them living in India with a net worth of $176.3bn.

The ratio of total wealth of the billionaires to gross domestic product (GDP) rose from around 1% in the mid-1990s to 22% at the peak of the stock market boom in 2008, before dropping to 10% of GDP this year.

Though 21 Indian billionaires are “self-made”, 40% of India’s total billionaire wealth is owned by the “inherited and growing” category of businessmen.

28 of the 46 billionaires come from traditional merchant classes (Banias, Parsis and Sindhis, for example), and a number of them belong to upper caste communities like Brahmins and Khatris. A smaller number belong to the lower castes. There is one Muslim billionaire and no Dalit billionaires.

A total of 43% of the billionaires, accounting for 60% of billionaire wealth, had their primary – and original – sources of wealth from industries like property development, infrastructure, construction, mining, telecoms, cement and media.That is,impressive wealth creation has occurred in sectors with substantial potential for rent-extraction and rent-sharing between private and government players.Business and the state have tight links in India.In the last two to three decades this has bred both impressive business dynamism and even more impressive accumulation of extreme wealth in India.