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The 9 Indian Billionaires

Nine Indians figure in the latest list of billionaires released by the Forbes magazine. Read on...

AZIM PREMJI (58th on the Forbes list)

Azim Premji's story has one that has been oft-repeated in the last few years. Yet it does not lose its sheen. After all, Premji has created one of the biggest technology companies in India today.

It's a remarkable story for the kind of metamorphosis that Premji managed to achieve with Wipro -- despite never finishing his graduate studies.

At 21, Premji had to rush to India from Stanford where he was studying after his father's suddenly died of a heart attack. He quit his engineering degree and rushed to take over the family's business.

From there he transformed Wipro, a company that largely sold edible oils, to one that is acknowledged as an Indian technology giant with interests in software services, medical systems and even consumer products.

At 58, Premji has become an icon for millions of middle class Indians who are working in the IT industry. On a global level, Premji has been recognized as an entrepreneur who has built one of India's biggest IT companies.

The vagaries of the stock market did impact his net worth. Between 2000 and 2002, his net worth plummeted from $40 billion to $6.5 billion, when the stock market when through a low phase in technology stocks.

But Premji remained unruffled, claiming that he cared little for the wealth. He has translated that nonchalance into action. He is known for staying in mid-priced hotels, flying economy class and he owns a rather boring Ford sedan.

For the last few years, Premji is a fixture on the Forbes' billionaires list. This year he has been ranked 58 on the list for his 74 percent holding of the Wipro stock. His fortune has been estimated at $6.7 billion.

LAKSHMI N MITTAL (62nd on the Forbes list)

When Lakshmi N Mittal joined the steel business, he was just following in the footsteps of his father, Mohan, who had set up Ispat Steel in the 1950s.

But Lakshmi had the vision that was needed to turn a local firm into a global player. In 1976, when the Indian government started heavily restricting domestic steel production, he opened a state-of-the-art mill in Indonesia.

From there his search for non-scrap iron to feed his plant took him to Trinidad and Tobago, where he in 1989 took on Iscott, a government-founded steel firm which was losing more than $100,000 a day. Within a year, of his taking it over, Iscott was making a profit.

From then on, Mittal embarked on a decade of international expansions buying plants in Mexico, Canada, Germany, Ireland and Kazakhstan. In 1995, he transferred the firm's headquarters from Indonesia to London and settled there

Nine years later, he was put at the number four spot in The Sunday Times' rich list for with his fortune estimated at £2.2 billion. Mittal has not been entirely free of controversies. His decision to buy the Romanian State-owned steel plant, Sidex, ran into trouble when the involvement of British Prime Minister Tony Blair was revealed.

But the buyout helped propel LNM, as his group is known, to the fourth spot in the world steel makers' league. 53-year old Mittal ranks 62 in the Forbes' list with a net worth of $6.2 billion.

MUKESH & ANIL AMBANI (65th on the Forbes list)

Barely two spots behind Mittal are Mukesh and Anil Ambani on the Forbes list. But it is just the legacy of their father, Dhirubhai Ambani, that they are building on.

From being a gas station attendant, Dhirubhai built the largest private sector group in India. Today Reliance provides almost 5 per cent of the central government's total revenues.

When Dhirubhai passed away two years ago, there were niggling doubts on how his sons, Mukesh and Anil, would handle the empire. But the duo has proved themselves worthy successors. The division of labour between the two is fairly clear. While Mukesh looks after the operational aspects of the empire, Anil handles the financial matters.

Together they have managed to plug an old economy giant like Reliance into the new economy. The group's expansionary urges now finds an outlet in the information technology sector. Reliance Telecom, an unlisted company with two operating divisions - Reliance Mobile and Reliance Basic is Mukesh Ambani's pet project.

Reliance Mobile has become a phenomenon in the telecom sector and a beautiful campus called the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City has been built in Mumbai.

Reliance has been galloping ahead in other areas too. Last year, it hit a jackpot when it found oil reserves in Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, Reliance completed its acquisition of BSES and has renamed it Reliance Power.

Last year, the group had revenues of $16.8 billion and accounted for 3.5 per cent of India's Gross Domestic Product.

Mukesh is married to Nita and is rather low profile, preferring to spend time with his children or reading technical journals. In contrast, the flamboyant Anil Ambani is seen at many Bollywood parties. He is married to former film actress, Tina, and is a fitness freak who participated in the recent Mumbai Marathon.

Their fortune has been assessed at $6 billion and they bag the 65th rank on the Forbes list.

KUMARAMANGLAM BIRLA (147th on the Forbes list)

36-year-old Kumaramanglam Birla is known in the corporate circles for his humility. His unassuming demeanor belies the fact that he is estimated to be worth $3.2 billion.

But he is also known for his acumen in building up the family business. Chairman of the Rs 12,000-crore (Rs 120 billion) Aditya Birla Group, has it in his genes.

He took over his father's business when he was just 27-years-old and grappling with the shock of his father sudden demise. Today he has transformed the culture of the Birla group and steered it to new levels.

In the initial days he concentrated on establishing his grip over the empire. But soon he marked on a series of acquisitions and strategic alliances to consolidate his existing businesses. In late 1997, he decided that group executives would compulsorily retire at 60 years - something unheard of before in the group.

He got the group to enter high-potential sectors such as software, insurance and branded apparels. Despite sitting on wealth, Birla is not the sort to flaunt his money. A non-smoker and a teetotaler, his only passion is paintings. He is known not to hesitate to pick up a painting if he spots something that attracts his attention. Birla's office in Mumbai has two pieces painted exclusively by the master M F Husain for him.

Married to Neerja, he has two children, daughter Ananyashree and son Aryaman Vikram. He is ranked 147th on the Forbes list.

SUNIL BHARTI MITTAL (186th on the Forbes list)

Sunil Mittal, 46, is that rare first generation entrepreneur billionaire. After graduating from Punjab University, he started a tiny bicycle business in the 1970s.

That company, Bharti Enterprises, has grown up to be one of India's biggest telecom service providers. In that journey, Mittal has done quite a few odd jobs. He has been a manufacturer of cycle parts, telephone instruments, gelatin capsules and importer of generator sets.

The turning point in Mittal's life came about in 1992 when the cellular licence for the Delhi metro circle was being given out to the private sector. He partnered with French telecom company, Vivendi, to bag the licence. He has not looked back since then.

Today Bharti offer cellular services, basic telephony, and is laying optic fibre cable across 200 cities. Bharti is also putting together a $650 million undersea cable project along with its partner Singapore Telecom connecting Chennai with Singapore.

SBM as he is popularly known in the telecom circles is a mix of earthy charm and an unbeatable business savvy. He attributes his success to hard work, destiny and the support of his managers who stuck through the company's ups and downs.

Interestingly, SBM does not see himself or his children (he has twin sons and a daughter) heading the business in the long run. He says he would be more comfortable if professional managers ran the company.

His vision, however, would be the guiding force for the company. And Sunil Bharti Mittal dreams of making Bharti one of the top two telecom players in the country. It's not an impossible task for a man who was once traversing through Delhi on a two-wheeler, marketing telephone instruments just two decades ago and now has a net worth of $2.7 billion and a ranking of 186 on the Forbes list.

PALLONJI MISTRY (231st on the Forbes list)

Pallonji Mistry is one of India's most reclusive billionaires. Though one of the richest Indians he is hardly ever heard from.

74-year-old Mistry has a fortune of $2.3 billion and a ranking of 231 on the list. But his story is not a familiar one. Few outside corporate India's circles have even heard his name.

Mistry has a 18.37 per cent stake in Tata Sons, the holding company of the Rs 44,000-crore (Rs 440 billion) Tata Group, making him the single largest individual shareholder. His holding is six times that of group Chairman Ratan Tata and his family.

Media reports say that Pallonji Mistry is an affable and humble person seldom willing to assert his authority or position. However, he carries a high degree of credibility in his business dealings.

Noel Tata, Ratan's half-brother and the son of Simone Tata, is married to Mistry's eldest daughter, Aloo.

Mistry's sons Shapoor and Cyrus are on the board of Indian Hotels and Tata Power, respectively.

The Mistrys have a huge construction company, Shapoorji Pallonji. Shapoorji, the group patriarch and Pallonji's father, built some of Mumbai's landmarks around the Fort area -- the Hong Kong Bank, Grindlays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Reserve Bank of India building.

Pallonji Mistry extended the construction interests of the group to the Middle East by bidding for the Sultan of Oman's palace.

ADI GODREJ (277th on the Forbes list)

Adi Godrej belongs to one of the most blue-blooded Indian business families. According to a media reports, Godrej's secretary for the past 33 years describes him as a man who respects punctuality and one who is impeccably organised with a table that is never clustered.

Godrej has steered the group through the years, constantly helping it keep up with the times. He says his challenge is to use the company's brand image and success to create a modern, efficient, young and consumer-centric organisation which can create a momentum of growth in the future."

Godrej believes every company needs to benchmark itself with global players. The company already receives 10 per cent of its revenue from operations outside India and aims to increase it to around 25 per cent over a 10-year period.

The affable industrialist rates former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, GE CEO Jack Welch and Indian industrialists JRD Tata and Dhirubhai Ambani as people whom he admires.

Godrej's US-educated daughters, Tanya and Nisa, now work with him. A keen sportsman, Godrej loves adventure sports like wind surfing, water skiing and paragliding. He is a major donor to the elite Indian School of Business, affiliated with the Wharton School and Northwestern's Kellogg.

At 61, Forbes says Adi Godrej is worth $2 billion and has ranked him 277th on its list.

SHIV NADAR (310th on the Forbes list)

The now-rather low profile Shiv Nadar is the brain behind the HCL group, which is rated as one of the biggest companies in the Indian IT industry.

Shiv Nadar along with friends like Arjun Malhotra who now runs TechSpan, started HCL from a small flat in Delhi in 1976.

An electrical engineer from Coimbatore, he had worked with Cooper Engineering as a systems analyst and as a senior management trainee at DCM before starting HCL.

As founder and key architect of the company, Nadar was among the first to work out the onsite-offshore model, realizing the limitations of the offshore business model. He spearheaded strategic alliances, joint ventures and acquisitions during 1995-97, the period during which HCL laid the foundation for its growth.

In 1996, Nadar's clout in the industry was such that when Microsoft chief Bill Gates visited India he met with Nadar soon after his breakfast with the prime minister.

In December 1999, the company successfully completed an IPO and raised Rs 823 crore (Rs 8.23 billion).

Apart from HCL technologies, Nadar has two other major investments: NIIT and HCL Infosystems. However, he stepped down as chairman from both these companies and has delegated responsibilities to Rajendra Pawar in NIIT and Ajay Chowdhry in HCL.

However, in the last three years, Nadar has almost completely stepped out of the limelight and is never seen at the IT industry's conferences or events.

With a fortune of $1.8 billion, the 58-year-old Nadar bags the 310th spot on the Forbes list.

ANIL AGARWAL (552nd on the Forbes list)

Sterlite Industries' Anil Agarwal is a risk-taker. And he has had its share of hits and misses.

In 1998, Sterlite made a hostile bid for Indian Aluminium Company but got pipped to the post by Hindalco in one of the most vitriolic takeover battles that corporate India has seen.

But in 2002, Sterlite bid for Balco successfully and turned Balco into a model for the government's divestment programme.

Agarwal set out as a cable manufacturer and then branched into telecom. Corporate India started taking notice of this first generation entrepreneur in the early 1990s, when he decided to integrate his cable business. Today, Sterlite is a near monopoly in the optic-fibre industry.

Meanwhile, Agarwal has become an integrated player in cables, copper and aluminum, all businesses integral to the fast growing telecom sector.

He plans to double Sterlite's annual turnover to around $3 billion by 2005-06. In 2002, he attempted to de-list Sterlite in Bombay with a share-buy back scheme. That de-listing paved the way for Sterlite to be headquartered in London - at an elegant former Rothschild family mansion. Ultimately, Agarwal wants Sterlite to list on the London Stock Exchange.

50-year-old Agarwal, with a worth of $1 billion, is ranked 552nd on the Forbes list and is poised to be the infrastructure king of the India's telecom sector.