Innovators top India’s billionaire chart

Premji, the country’s richest individual, has a net worth of a staggering Rs 17,600 crore, based on the market capitalisation or the market value of the shares of his company — Premji holds 75 per cent of Wipro’s shares. Such is the valuethat the country’s stock markets put to Premji’s acumen and prospects for earning, that his wealth has tripled in the last year, with the share price tripling from Rs 1,558 just a few months ago to Rs 5,575 today.

Nadar and his friends are collectively worth Rs 6,900 crore. And it’s only because the market value of their company increased 128 per cent in the last one year, that they managed to pip last year’s number two Dhirubhai Ambani.

The knowledge companies, as opposed to those like Reliance who are essentially size-driven manufacturing conglomerates in what is called the `commodity’ business, continue their march down the Billionaire Club. Numbers four and five are Narayana Murthy of Infosys and the late Parvinder Singh’s of Ranbaxy Laboratories’ heirs, Malvinder and Shivinder. While Infosys is a software blue-chip, Ranbaxy’s made its fortunes in developing new medicine molecules and selling them for huge sums to multinational pharma companies.

As the project editor for Business Standard’slist, Pradipta Bagchi puts it, `at least 15 of the 100 enterprises in (the) list own no factories, manufacture nothing. They have created wealth by selling ideas and products that are more the product of mental than manual labour.’ Other Knowledge Warriors who figure big in the list of the country’s 100 billionaires are YK Hamied of pharma company Cipla, RC Burman of ayurveda giant Dabur, Anji Reddy of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, HF Khorakiwala of Wockhardt, Shantilal Shangvi of Sun Pharma and Ajay Piramal of Nicholas Piramal.

Subhash Chandra of Zee TV, the man who gave Rupert Murdoch of Star TV a bloody nose, has catapulted from number 12 last year to number 8 and has a net worth of Rs 2,225 crore got from beaming his channel to an estimated 20 million households across the globe.

One of the fastest ascents, from 89th last year to 32nd this time, is the combination of Vinay Maloo, Mahendra Nahata and Deepak Malhotra who are collectively worth a little under Rs 500 crore. They head the controversial HimachalFuturistic Communications Limited which got into a lot of adverse publicity during former Communications Minister Sukh Ram’s regime — HFCL, however, is one of the top communication supply firms in the country and was single-handedly responsible for sharp reductions in the price of telecom equipment in India, previously dominated by companies such as Alcatel.

And Gautam Adani has come in from virtually nowhere, from 52 last year to 31. His port project in Gujarat has seen his networth rise 150 per cent to Rs 500 crore today.

Interestingly, while the Billionaire’s list continues to feature yesteryear’s giants such as Hari Shankar Singhania, most remain due to their sheer historical size alone. Bajaj Auto’s Rahul Bajaj is number 7 on the list, but is down four notches from last year, and saw a 24 per cent fall in his company’s net worth. The Ruias of Essar Steel saw their net worth fall 16 per cent, and their rank fell from 15 last year to 30. Sajjan Jindal of Jindal Steel fell from 21 to 45 with his networth falling 25 per cent.

Others such as LM Thapar and RP Goenka’s successors are still trying to put their groups in good condition, and have managed to up their positions. Thapar’s net worth is up 135 per cent and his rank is up from 23 to 14. RPG is up from 36 to 25.

That’s the lesson of reforms. Those who adapt, succeed. Those who don’t die. Equally clear is that the era of traditional manufacturing is over — those such as Ambani and Birla who are increasing exponentially in size will succeed in keeping the competition at bay, but just about. While Ambani’s net worth grew by just 29 per cent and Birla’s by just 34, Premji’s grew 160 per cent and Narayana Murthy’s by 270 per cent.