Mumbai: The Ambani family, headed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, possesses a wealth of Rs 28 lakh crore, more than double that of the Adani family at Rs 14.01 lakh crore, a report said on Tuesday. The 300 most valuable Indian families have a wealth of over USD 1.6 trillion (over Rs 140 lakh crore), or more than 40 per cent of the country’s GDP. The Ambani family’s wealth alone accounts for 12 per cent of the country’s GDP.
The Ambani family witnessed a 10 per cent increase in its wealth in the last year to retain its ranking as the most valuable family business in the country, while the Adani family is the most valuable family business started by a first-generation entrepreneur, as per a report prepared by Hurun in association with Barclays.
The Kumar Mangalam Birla family had a 20 per cent increase in its fortunes to Rs 6.47 lakh crore in the last year, which helped it move up one place to occupy the second rank among the multi-generation families’ list, while the Jindal family also moved up a rank courtesy a 21 per cent jump in wealth to Rs 5.70 lakh crore, it said.
The Bajaj family slipped one rank to be the fourth in the list because of a 21 per cent decline in the fortune to Rs 5.64 lakh crore. The report said the country’s top 300 families by wealth generated Rs 7,100 crore of wealth per day last year. The number of families possessing over USD 1 billion (around Rs 8,700 crore) in wealth rose by 37 to 161 now, as per the report.
More than a fourth of the businesses on the list are not listed on the exchanges, it said. Amid the thrust on manufacturing, the list said only 11 per cent of the businesses on the list are service-oriented, while the remaining 89 per cent sell physical products.
There was an addition of nine companies that prefer to run the business through a professional chief executive hired from outside the family in the last year, and the number of such families is 62 now. Mumbai has the highest contribution at 91 families, followed by the National Capital Region’s 62 and 25 from Kolkata.
Amid the concerns over the newer generation in families preferring to manage wealth, rather than run a business, Barclays’ head of private bank Nitin Singh said Rs 130 lakh crore of wealth is expected to transfer across generations over the next five years, and a record 71 families now operate dedicated family offices.
Interestingly, the report said that private equity has expanded its ownership of such businesses, Hurun India’s chief researcher Anas Rahman Junaid said, pointing to deals such as Temasek’s buy into Haldiram’s. Around three-quarters of the top family businesses witnessed a growth in their fortunes in the last year, he added.
With the US tariffs being in focus, the report said around 120 families on the list, including Arvind’s denim, Bharat Forge’s truck axles, and Meril’s medical devices, face billions of dollars in export revenue at risk over the next 12 months as U.S. tariffs climb to 50 per cent.
On the giving front, the report said the top families donated Rs 5,100 crore to various causes last year as compared with their combined wealth of Rs 134 lakh crore.
