36 Desi Billionaires on Forbes 2007 List

The poor of India may have expressed their writ on the ballot paper but India’s super rich are emblazoned on the pages of Forbes magazine and its famed billionaire annual.

In a year the magazine declares as the best ever for the world’s uber-rich, a record 36 desi tycoons, including 14 newcomers, have made the billionaire cut in 2007.

As a result, the baton for the number of individual billionaires in Asia has passed on from Japan to India, although there is still a yawning gap in the per capita income between two countries.

Forbes notes that “After a 20-year reign, Japan is no longer Asia's top spot for billionaires: India has 36, worth a total of $191 billion, followed by Japan with 24, worth a combined $64 billion.”'

India's rich are also marching toward the top of our rankings, the magazine observes. Brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani, who split up their family’s conglomerate in 2005, join Lakshmi Mittal, who heads the world's biggest steel company, Arcelor Mittal, among the world’s 20 wealthiest.

According to Forbes , India now has three billionaires in the Top 20, second only to the US with four. Sweden, France and Germany have two billionaires each in the Top 20.

Allowing for the expression that the rich always get richer, this has been an extraordinarily productive year for the wealthy. Strong equity markets combined with rising real estate values and commodity prices pushed up fortunes from Mumbai to Madrid, Forbes said, ending with it identifying a record 946 billionaires worldwide. Of them, 83 are women.

The number of billionaires is 19 per cent higher than last year when there were 793, and their total net worth grew 35 per cent to $3.5 trillion. There were 178 newcomers, including 19 Russians, 14 Indians, 13 Chinese and 10 Spaniards, as well as the first billionaires from Cyprus, Oman, Romania and Serbia.

Forbes identified ingenuity, not industry, as the common characteristic of the billionaires. They made money in everything from media and real estate to coffee, dumplings and ethanol. Of list members' fortunes, 60% made their money from scratch.

Two-thirds of last year's billionaires are richer. Only 17% are poorer, including 32 who fell below the billion-dollar mark. The average billionaire is 62 years old, two years younger than in 2005. This year's new billionaires are seven years younger than that.

To no one’s great surprise, Bill Gates is still the world’s wealthiest tycoon (for the 13th year in a
row) with a fortune estimated at $ 56 billion. He is followed by his friend, mentor, and bridge-playing partner Warren Buffett with has $ 52 billion.

But moving up fast in the list is Mexico’s telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú, whose net worth went up an astonishing $19 billion this year - the single biggest one-year gain in a decade. With a fortune estimated at $ 49 billion, he is now just $7 billion shy of Gates and $3 billion less than Buffett.