Sixty-five founders of 37 unicorns including Physics Wallah’s Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, Byju Raveendran and family and Riju Ravindran of Byju's, Falguni Nayar and the family of Nykaa figure among the 100 startup founders that have made it to the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 released on Wednesday.
The list features individuals with a net worth of Rs 1,000 crore or more.
Nineteen-year-old grocery delivery app Zepto’s co-founder Kaivalya Vohra is the youngest self-made and the youngest rich individual, according to the report. In total, 13 individuals born in the 1990s made it to the list, including the other Zepto cofounder, 20-year old Aadit Palicha. That said, the average age of the individuals on this list was 70.
According to the report, Nykaa’s chief executive Nayar, with a wealth of Rs 38,700 crore, overtook Biocon’s executive chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw to become the richest self-made Indian woman. Shaw’s wealth stands at Rs 24,800 crore, the report added.
With a 345% rise in wealth, Nayar is also the second-biggest gainer this year, only behind Ravi Modi of Vedant Fashions (Manyavar & Mohey), who saw his wealth grow by 376% to Rs 32,400 crore. Both Nykaa and Vedant Fashions marked their public debuts within the past 12 months.
“India has the third-highest number of unicorns and gazelles (fast-growing enterprises with base revenues of $100,000 or more) in the world. IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 has 100 entrants from 59 startups and going forward, the share of startups is likely to increase manifold. This has resulted in more young entrepreneurs entering the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List. For instance, the youngest ten years ago was 37, last year was 23 and this year is 19,” said Anas Rahman Junaid, managing director and chief researcher, Hurun India.
Other unicorn founders who are featured on the list include Zeta’s Bhavin Turakhia, Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath and family as well as Nikhil Kamath, Eruditus’ Ashwin Damera, and BrowserStack’s Nakul Aggarwal and Ritesh Arora, Ashish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra of Ofbusiness, among others.
Among investors, Info Edge India’s Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Unilazer Ventures’ and Upgrad cofounder Ronnie Screwvala, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, DSP BlackRock’s Hemendra Kothari and family found themselves on the list.
The cumulative wealth of the 100 startup founders stood at Rs 5.06 lakh crore while their average age was 40 years, as per the report jointly published by Hurun India and IIFL Wealth.
From the fintech space, the list saw several entries including Kunal Shah of Cred; Upstox’s Raghu Nathan Kumar, Ravi Chandran Kumar, Shrinivas Vishwanath and Kavitha Subramanian; and Anurag Sinha of OneCard.
Most unicorn founders declined to comment. “It is just paper wealth,” one of them said, asking to remain anonymous.
Other sector cohorts also dominated the list.
The pharmaceuticals sector threw up 126 individuals with a networth higher than Rs 1000 crore this year, with covishield vaccine maker Serum Institute of India’s cofounder at the top.
The chemicals and petrochemicals sector contributed 102 individuals to the list, while there were 84 from the software & services segment. Chemicals industry produced the highest number of new additions this year.
In total, 1,103 individuals made the list, 96 more than from last year, across 122 cities. A total of 735 entrepreneurs or 67% of the individuals on the list are self-made, up from 659 last year, and up from 367 five years ago.
The list was topped by Gautam Adani and family with a total wealth of Rs 10.94 lakh crore, followed by Mukesh Ambani and family at Rs 7.94 lakh crore.
With 283 individuals, Mumbai is home to the highest number of wealthy Indian individuals, followed by New Delhi and Bengaluru at 185 and 89, respectively.