India Makes Three Billionaires Each Month Despite the Worst Economic Slowdown in a Decade

India is currently facing its worst economic slowdown in a decade. But even as a major part of the country suffers from unemployment, malnutrition and lack of access to basic healthcare, there’s an entire section that keeps getting richer, worsening the country’s rich-poor divide.

According to the Hurun Rich List 2020, a global indicator that measures the wealth of filthy rich folks around the world in dollars, India has the third highest number of billionaires in the world. Last year, on an average, three Indians became billionaires each month. This brings the total number of Indian billionaires to 137, ranking below China and US, which have 799 and 626 billionaires respectively. 33 of the Indians on the list entered it last year whereas 10 dropped out.

This big boost of wealth can most probably be attributed to the right kind of large cap investments, or investing in stocks upward of $10 billion that give back even higher profits if you choose wisely. “Indian billionaires are defying gravity as the structural slowdown in the economy doesn’t seem to hamper the growth of Indians in the list,” Anas Rahman Junaid, managing director and chief researcher of the Hurun Report India said in a media statement. “The missing pieces in the puzzle are automobile and the real estate sector and we expect exponential wealth creation in those sectors in the coming years. If the economy were to grow apace to meet the $5-trillion target, the total wealth creation would at least double the current value.”

Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited, continues to reign at the top with a net worth of $67 billion because of the steady growth of his telecom company. Fun fact: He minted ₹7 crore every hour of 2019.

Other billionaires on the list include Gautam Adani (founder of the Adani Group with $17 billion), Uday Kotak (chairman of Kotak Mahindra bank and the richest self-made banker in the world with $15 billion), and Radhakishan Damani (founder of D-Mart supermarket chain with $10.6 billion). Ritesh Agarwal, who founded OYO Rooms, the saviour of sex-craving Indian couples who still live at home, has become India’s youngest self-made billionaire with a net worth of $1.1 billion last year, while Smitha V Chrisnan of the Godrej Group became India’s richest woman with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Other insights found that the super-rich flock to the city of Mumbai, with 50 individuals from the list living there followed by 30 living it up in New Delhi and 17 basking in the traffucked glory of Bengaluru.

It was also observed that most billionaires worked in the pharmaceutical, telecom, technology and media industries and their success could be attributed to a boom in these sectors. However, according to Economic Times, the coronavirus outbreak has seriously affected most of these billionaires’ businesses over the last 15 days. Mukesh Ambani not only lost $5 billion of his wealth, but even Kotak’s stocks took a huge hit. However, analysts remain positive about these depleting stocks making a comeback.

Globally, Amazon’s controversial founder Jeff Bezos came out at the top with a net worth of $140 billion. Meanwhile, China added 182 new billionaires last year, three times more than the US. While China’s economy is currently kinda in deep shit due to the coronavirus outbreak, interestingly, the disease has resulted in a mini booms for the Chinese drug makers involved with vaccines, online education and games.

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