Takeover tycoon and the world’s second richest person, 60-year-old Gautam Adani, naturally heads India’s rich list with a wealth of Rs 10,94,400 crore, as per the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022.

Interestingly, Adani gets the honours for the first time as that spot was occupied by Reliance Industries Ltd’s head honcho Mukesh Ambani whose wealth is estimated at Rs 7,94,700 crore.

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Adani topped the list by adding Rs 1,600 crore per day over the last year.

Last year, Ambani was ahead of Adani’s wealth by Rs 2 lakh crore.

But now, Adani is ahead of Ambani by Rs 3 lakh crore.

Adani’s wealth has more than doubled (116 per cent) in the last one year and in absolute terms, he added Rs 5,88,500 crore. In the last five years, the first-generation entrepreneur’s wealth has increased by 1440 per cent.

The combined market value of the Adani group’s seven publicly traded companies, all of which carry the industrialist’s name, has increased significantly in the past few years. The mining-to-energy conglomerate has promised to invest $70 billion in green energy and become the world’s largest renewables producer.

“From an Indian wealth creation perspective, 2022 will be remembered for Adani’s meteoric rise. Briskly expanding his commodity trading company into a coal-to-port-to-energy conglomerate, he is the only Indian to have built not one, but seven companies with a market cap of one lakh crore. The cumulative wealth growth of the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 excluding Adani is only 2.67 per cent compared to the overall 9 per cent,” IIFL Wealth Hurun India said.

“In 2012, Adani’s wealth was hardly one-sixth of Ambani’s wealth and no one could imagine that he would overtake Ambani to become the richest man in India in 10 years. This is a reflection of the dynamism and structural transformation of the Indian economy. The success of a first-generation entrepreneur like Adani exemplifies the potential for growth in an economy that is witnessing economies of scale in many unexploited sectors and the paradigm shift in the generation of new wealth,” the statement added.

Curiously, Adani, who is in the process of hostile takeover of New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV), has taken the two promoters of the satellite channel company to India’s rich list.

According to IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List, Prannoy Roy and his wife Radhika Roy have entered India’s rich list (681 ranks) with a combined wealth of Rs 2,000 crore after Adani group companies acquired a stake in NDTV and announced an open offer for 26 per cent stake.

When compared over five years, some of the billionaires have scaled up significantly and surged ahead as their companies created wealth at an unprecedented speed. Gautam Adani and his brother Vinod Adani are the most obvious, as they moved up in ranking. Gautam moved up from the 8th rank in 2018 to the number one spot when his wealth increased 15.4 times, while his brother Vinod moved up from the 49th spot to the sixth ranking.