Despite a stock market correction and a weaker rupee, there are a record 205 Indian citizens on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list. The 10 richest account for over a third of their cumulative total net worth of $941 billion.
Global jitters, caused by the tariffs tsunami unleashed by President Donald Trump, took a toll on India’s stock markets, which corrected after last year’s stratospheric rise. Despite the dampener, the country churned out a record 205 billionaires on Forbes’ 2025 list of the World’s Billionaires—up from 200 last year. A weaker rupee, didn’t help: their combined wealth is $941 billion—down from $954 billion in 2024. The 10 richest Indians are worth nearly $337 billion, over a third of the total, down by a massive $56 billion from a year ago.
The bulk of that decline can be attributed to the falling fortunes of the richest and the second richest , who saw their combined wealth erode by $51 billion. Despite a one-fifth drop in his net worth to $92.5 billion, Mukesh Ambani retained his position as both the wealthiest Asian and India’s richest person-though he’s no longer a centibillionaire.
Shares of his Reliance Industries conglomerate lagged the market, falling 15% since the last list. That was partly due to weaker margins in the oil refining and petrochemicals businesses and competitive pressures facing its retailing unit, which he plans to eventually list. (Ambani’s Reliance owns Network18, which is a licensee of Forbes Media and publishes Forbes India.)
Infrastructure and commodities tycoon Gautam Adani registered the biggest dollar decline among Indian billionaires this year. His fortune fell by a third to $56.3 billion though he held on to his spot as India’s second wealthiest citizen. Shares of Adani companies tumbled in November when the U.S. Department of Justice indicted his group and its officials in a bribery case involving a solar project in India. The self-made billionaire’s group denied the allegations as baseless.
The composition of the ten richest Indians hasn’t changed from a year ago though there was some shuffle in the pecking order. India’s richest woman, Savitri Jindal, matriarch of the O.P. Jindal group, is now the third wealthiest Indian with a net worth of $35.5 billion, up from number four last year. Her Mumbai-based son Sajjan Jindal made an ambitious push into electric cars by acquiring a 35% stake in the Indian arm of MG Motor, a unit of China’s state-owned SAIC Motor.
Jindal is one of four among the ten richest to notch a wealth gain while the remaining half a dozen are all less well off. Tech tycoon Shiv Nadar, who recently transferred a chunk of his stake in flagship HCL Technologies to his only daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra, slips to the position of fourth richest in India, with a net worth of $34.5 billion.
Overall, the wealth of 92 Indian billionaires was up from last year including Shiv Kishan Agrawal and Manohar Lal Agarwal, whose wealth, tied to Indian snack maker Haldiram Snacks Foods, more than doubled after Singapore’s Temasek acquired a stake valuing the firm at $10 billion. Madhusudan Agarwal from the same family is one of 17 new Indian billionaires this year.
Among the others making their debut are: Bhavish Aggarwal, the feisty founder and CEO of ride-hailing firm Ola Cabs, who took his Ola Electric, a maker of EV scooters and motorcycles public last August; Mahima Datla, who runs vaccine maker Biological E, in which she has a controlling stake; entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, the former head of Walt Disney in India, who deployed his media fortune — after selling out to Disney — in edtech; and garments exporter Harish Ahuja, whose Shahi Exports, a company started by his mother, supplies to brands such as H&M and Calvin Klein.
Three people returned to the list after previously falling off, including Satish Mehta, who founded and runs generics maker Emcure Pharmaceutical, which he listed last July. The market meltdown knocked down fourteen people from last year’s list, including Pradeep Rathod, chairman and managing director of Cello World, a household name in India for plastic products, from storage boxes to moulded furniture.
