India Home to Most Billionaires in Asia

Further evidence of the rise of India as one of the economic powerhouses of Asia has come from Forbes magazine’s billionaire list for 2007, which ranks the country as Asia’s leading home to the superrich.

India may still rank only as the third largest diamond consuming country in the world, behind US and Japan, but with 36 billionaires on the Forbes list, it has overtaken Japan (24), and is now comes in at number 4 worldwide, behind the US (415), Germany (55) and Russia (53). Japan had held the number 1 position in Asia for the past two decades.

The rate at which wealth has been created in the booming Indian economy can be gauged from the fact that the 36 Indian billionaires are together worth US$ 191 billion, whereas the 23 Indians who were on the list last year had a combined wealth of US$ 98.8 billion.

The country has three names in the top 20 – Laxmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, with a fourth, Azim Premji coming in at 21 – making it the number 2 country on the top 20 list.

In the Asian context, there are nine Indians among the Top 12. Of the 54 new Asian billionaires, 14 are from India. 

Of course, the boom in billionaires only reflects the huge growth in the numbers of “superrich” households in the country (i.e. with an annual income of Rs 4 million - $90,500), now estimated at 1.8 million and accounting for over six million consumers. They are driving the rapid growth of the luxury goods market in India.