Under US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime, India faced 50 percent import duties, which were negotiated down to 18 percent in early February just before the US Supreme Court ruled against the levies. But the prospect of that potential blow, coupled with rising oil prices, hammered the rupee, which sank nearly 5 percent from a year ago. Against these odds, India produced a record 229 billionaires on Forbes’s 2026 list of the World’s Billionaires—up from 205 last year—thanks partly to a rush of new listings on the stock market, which managed to stay aloft. The combined wealth of Indian billionaires crossed $1 trillion, up from $941 billion in 2025. The 10 richest Indians are worth $368 billion, over a third of the total, after adding a hefty $32 billion from a year ago.
The richest and second richest, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, are up by a combined $14.7 billion. With shares of his Reliance Industries gaining 12 percent in the past year, Ambani retains his position as both the wealthiest Asian and India’s richest person—though he falls slightly short of reclaiming his status as a centi-billionaire from two years ago. (Ambani’s Reliance owns Network18, which is a licensee of Forbes Media and the publisher of Forbes India.)
Both tycoons plunged into the artificial intelligence (AI) race, pledging massive investments totalling $210 billion by their respective conglomerates to create AI infrastructure across the country. At the recent AI Impact Summit convened by the government in Delhi—which drew AI A-listers such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic—Ambani’s son Akash showcased how Reliance’s telecom unit Jio and financial services arm, Jio Financial, are deploying the technology. Meanwhile, Adani has said his group’s green energy unit is prepping to power their upcoming AI data centres.
Matriarch of the OP Jindal group, Savitri Jindal, retained her status as the third-wealthiest Indian and the country’s richest woman, leading a group of 20 Indian women billionaires. Her Mumbai-based son Sajjan Jindal’s JSW MG Motor India, a joint venture with China’s state-owned SAIC Motor, said in November that it had sold more than 100,000 electric vehicles to date.
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The biggest gainer in both dollar and percentage terms among all Indian billionaires is the country’s fourth-richest person, steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. The long-time UK resident recently shifted his base to Switzerland, joining the exodus of the wealthy after the UK’s new tax regime came into force. His Luxembourg-headquartered ArcelorMittal’s shares jumped more than 80 percent since last year’s ranking, amid the European Commission’s introduction of import quotas aimed at protecting domestic producers. Mittal’s fortune expanded by $11.8 billion, or 61 percent, to $31 billion, which is still well below his peak net worth of $45 billion in 2008, when he was the world’s fourth-richest person.
One notable change in the composition of the top 10 this year: Billionaire banker Uday Kotak, founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank—who was recently bestowed the Padma Bhushan, one of the nation’s highest civilian awards—joins this group. He takes the spot of property developer Kushal Pal Singh of DLF, who slips to the position of the 12th-richest Indian. Overall, 99 Indian billionaires are better off this year and 30 newcomers make their debut. Five in the latter group are in their 30s, including Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, the 35-year-old co-founders of payments firm Razorpay; Mathur is also an alumnus of Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Asia list. The youngest is San Francisco-based Aravind Srinivas, 31, co-founder of Jeff Bezos-backed AI search startup Perplexity, which hit a $20 billion valuation in 2025. Another pair of co-founders are Alakh Pandey and Prateek Boob, who became billionaires after the November IPO of their edtech firm PhysicsWallah, which offers a slew of test prep courses. Half a dozen other new faces join the billionaires club after taking their companies public in the past 12 months.
Four people return to the list, including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of payments app Paytm, who makes a comeback after a three-year hiatus. Shares of Paytm, once backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, jumped 60 percent in the past year but are still trading at nearly half their IPO price. Eight people from last year’s list have dropped off, including Bhavish Aggarwal, the outspoken founder of ride-hailing firm Ola Cabs, whose Krutrim, touted as India’s first AI unicorn, reportedly made multiple layoffs last year.
