Forbes top 10 billionaires: These are the richest Indians on the list

SUMMARY

Some businessmen are rich. And then there're some who are richer than the rich. To make it into the latter group, you need a net worth of at least $11 billion. Forbes has released a list of top 10 billionaires of India and Reliance Industries' Mukesh Ambani seized the top spot. Ambani chairs and runs $51 billion (revenues) oil and gas giant Reliance Industries, among India's most valuable companies. Here is the complete list of top Indian businessmen cum billionaires:

By CNBC-TV18Sept 21, 2018 2:49:46 PM IST (Updated)

1. Mukesh Ambani: Founder and Chairman, Reliance Industries Ltd. Real Time Net Worth: $47.7 billion. Mukesh Ambani chairs and runs $51 billion (revenues) oil and gas giant Reliance Industries, among India's most valuable companies. Reliance was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer. After his father's death in 2002, Ambani and his younger sibling Anil divided up the family empire. In 2016, Reliance sparked a price war in India's hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio. Jio has signed on 160 million customers by offering free domestic voice calls, dirt-cheap data services and virtually free smartphones.

2. Azim Premji: Chairman, Wipro Limited. Real Time Net Worth: $21.2 billion. Indian tech magnate Azim Premji's $9 billion (revenue) Wipro is India's third-largest outsourcer. Premji gave up studies at Stanford University to look after the family's cooking oil business in 1966 when his father died and expanded into software. Wipro has an innovation centre in Silicon Valley, which is focused on developing new technologies and collaborating with startups. Premji's son Rishad, who heads strategy and sits on the board, also oversees Wipro's $100 million venture capital fund.

3. Hinduja family: Real Time Net Worth: $18.2 billion. Four close-knit siblings, Srichand, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok, control multinational conglomerate the Hinduja Group. Their group's businesses range from trucks and lubricants to banking and cable television. The brothers own valuable real estate in London, including their home Carlton House Terrace and the historic Old War Office building in Whitehall. Srichand and Gopichand live in London and Prakash resides in Geneva while the youngest sibling Ashok oversees their Indian interests from Mumbai.

4. Lakshmi Mittal: Chairman and CEO, ArcelorMittal. Real Time Net Worth: $18.2 billion. Lakshmi Mittal serves as chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker. Hailing from a steel clan, he separated from his siblings to start Mittal Steel then went on to merge the company with France's Arcelor in 2006. Benefiting from the steel recovery, the company reported a surge in net profit to $4.6 billion in 2017 on revenue of $68.7 billion. ArcelorMittal, along with Italian steel firm Marcegaglia, acquired Italy's loss making steel group Ilva for $2.1 billion in June 2017. ArcelorMittal has partnered with Japan's Nippon Steel to bid for billionaire siblings Shashi and Ravi Ruia's debt-strapped Essar Steel.

5. Pallonji Mistry: Real Time Net Worth: $15.4 billion. Reclusive tycoon Pallonji Mistry controls Mumbai-headquartered engineering and construction giant, 153-year-old Shapoorji Pallonji Group. The family's biggest asset is an 18.4 percent stake in Tata Sons, holding outfit of the $100 billion (revenue) Tata Group, a conglomerate of 100 companies. The S.P. Group, run by Mistry's older son Shapoor, also owns Eureka Forbes, the country's leading brand of water purifiers. Mistry's younger son Cyrus is embroiled in a legal battle with the Tata Group after he was suddenly ousted as chairman of Tata Sons in October 2016.

6. Godrej family: Net Worth (As of 2017): $14.2 billion. The Godrej family controls the $4.6 billion (revenue) Godrej Group, a 120-year-old consumer-goods giant. The group was established by lawyer Ardeshir Godrej, who gave up his profession to make locks in 1897. Today the group is chaired by patriarch Adi Godrej, an MIT graduate, who took charge as chairman in 2000. Key group companies include Godrej Consumer Products, chaired by Adi Godrej's daughter Nisaba and Godrej Properties, run by his son Pirojsha. The family owns a vast parcel of land in suburban Mumbai that remains its biggest asset.

7. Shiv Nadar: Real Time Net Worth: $14.6 billion. Indian IT pioneer Shiv Nadar cofounded HCL in a garage in 1976 to make calculators and microprocessors. Today, he chairs HCL Technologies, a $7.5 billion (revenue) company that is India's fourth-largest software services provider. To offset a slowdown in its traditional IT services business, HCL has invested $780 million in an intellectual property partnership with IBM. HCL Technologies, which employs 120,000 people worldwide, hires high school grads and trains them on the job. One of India's leading philanthropists, Nadar has donated $662 million to his Shiv Nadar Foundation, which backs education-related causes.

8. Kumar Birla: Real Time Net Worth: $12.7 billion. Commodities king Kumar Birla is the fourth generation head of the storied, $41 billion (revenue) Aditya Birla Group. The group's interests span cement and aluminum to telecom and financial services. Birla inherited the family empire at age 28 when his father Aditya Birla died in 1995. In March 2017, Birla orchestrated the merger between his telecom firm Idea Cellular and Vodafone India to take on Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio.

9. Dilip Shanghvi & family: Net Worth (As of 2017): $12.1 billion. Son of a pharma distributor, Dilip Shanghvi borrowed $200 from his father to start Sun Pharmaceutical Industries in 1983 to make psychiatric drugs. The company is the world's fourth largest speciality generics maker and India's most valuable pharma outfit with March 2017 revenues of $5 billion. Shanghvi grew Sun through a series of shrewd acquisitions, the biggest of which was the purchase of rival Ranbaxy Laboratories for $4 billion in 2014. Sun's shares fell after the US Food and Drug Administration observed manufacturing lapses at one of its biggest factories in India.

10. Gautam Adani & family: Net Worth (As of 2017): $11 billion. Ports tycoon Gautam Adani controls Mundra Port, India's largest, in his home state of Gujarat. His $12 billion (revenue) Adani Group's interests include power generation and transmission, real estate and commodities. Adani's overseas assets include Australia's Abbott Point port and the controversial Carmichael coal mine, billed as one of the world's largest. Adani's son Karan runs listed firm Adani Ports & SEZ, now the family's biggest asset. Adani Group has partnered Swedish defence firm Saab to make Gripen fighter jets in India.