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Business Insider IndiaTop tech billionaires on the Forbes 100 Richest Indians listBCCL
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The Forbes 100 Richest Indians list puts Shiv Nadar on top as the country’s richest tech billionaire worth $14.4 billion.
Wipro chairman Azim Premji ranks second with a net worth of $7.2 billion.
The list also sees the debut of Byju Raveendran, who is the youngest billionaire on the list and the only one who is under 40 years old.
The richest of the rich when it comes to India’s digital economy include a few familiar faces, and a few brand new ones.
On the one hand, the list is dominated by regulars like HCL’s Shiv Nadar and Wipro’s Azim Premji. On the other, start up founders like Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Byju founder Byju Raveendran are also working their way up the list.
It should be noted that when it comes to technology sector, Infosys seems to be in the business of creating billionaires. Four of the top ten billionaires are currently working for the digital giant, or have in the past.
Scroll on to see the ten richest tech billionaires on Forbes 100 Richest Indians list:
Shiv Nadar is the founder and chairman of HCL Technologies. He is currently the richest tech billionaire in India according to Forbes 100 Richest Indians list with a net worth of $14.4 billion.
Nadar was also a recipient of the Padma Bushan — India’s third highest civilian honor — in 2008 for his contributions to the Indian IT industry.
2. Azim Premji - $7.2 billion
(Source:BCCL)
The ‘czar’ of the Indian IT industry recognised for his philanthropic efforts is the second richest tech magnet on the Forbes 100 Richest Indians list. Azim Premji currently has a net worth of $7.2 billion, but has given away more than half of his net worth over the past few years.
He dropped out of Stanford at the age of 21 to take over Wipro after his father’s death. At that point, Wipro was only a soap and oil company. Employing his background in engineering, Premji turned the company into the software conglomerate that it is today.
3. NR Narayana Murthy — $2.47 billion
(Source:BCCL)
Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy is the third third tech billionaire in India. Currently 73 years old, Murthy has a net worth of $2.47 billion according to the Forbes 100 Richest Indians list.
Dubbed ‘the father of the Indian IT sector’, he was ranked as one of the 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time by Fortune Magazine in 2012. He was also among the top 10 business pioneers in technology published by the Financial Times in 2015.
4. Senapathy Gopalakrishnan - $2.36 billion
(Source:BCCL)
Senapathy Gopalakrishnan is currently the chairman of Axilor Ventures, a company that funds and mentors startups in India. He is also the former executive vice chairman and one of the seven founders of Infosys.
The 64-year-old’s net worth stands at $2.36 billion. Gopalakrishnan made significant donations in areas of brain research and been a flag bearer in the field.
5. Vijay Shekhar Sharma - $2.35 billion
(Source:BCCL)
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is one of the newer faces to feature on the Forbes Richest Indians list. He’s also one of the few that inspired a whole generation of Indians to build their own solutions and startups.
Even though his net worth is currently $2.35 billion, he prides himself a ‘man of the people’. That being said, he is a prodigy in his own right, having started college at the age of 15 years.
In his rise to success, he was Forbes youngest billionaire of India in 2017.
6. Byju Raveendran - $1.91 billion
(Source: BCCL)
Byju Raveendran, founder of the Byju’s digital education platform, is a new face on the list and the only one that’s under 40 years old.
He is the youngest billionaire on the Forbes 100 Rich list — not just in the technology sector, but overall. Raveendran’s digital education startup has burgeoned in popularity over the past year and been boosted by the increase in internet connectivity and penetration in India.
BYJU’s, the learning app, was founded in 2011 and gives tutorials online.
7. Sridhar Vembu - $1.83 billion
(Source: BCCL)
Tech billionaire Sridhar Vembu is the brains behind ZOHO, one of the most popular software and cloud service companies in the world.
He’s currently worth $1.83 billion as the majority shareholder of Zoho. He has a doctorate in electrical engineering from Princeton and has worked at Qualcomm, the chipset manufacturing company, in the past.
8. Nandan Nilekani - $1.81 billion
(Source: BCCL)
Nandan Nilekani, the architect of India’s Aadhaar identification system and an Infosys co-founder, is the eighth richest tech billionaire in the country with a net worth of $1.81 billion.
Currently, he’s the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDA) and overlooks Aadhaar’s operations in the country.
9. K Dinesh - $1.61 billion
(Source: Infosys)
The fourth Infosys co founder among the ten richest tech billionaires in India, K Dinesh, has a net worth of $1.61 billion.
He stepped down from the company’s board in 2011 and has since devoted his resources towards philanthropic efforts like funding the cancer center at the Narayana Health Hospital in Mysore.
10. Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia - $1.54 billion
(Source: BCCL)
The Turakhia brothers, Bhavin and Divyank, are worth at $1.54 billion. Bhavin has co-founded a number of tech ventures like Ringo, Flock, Zeta and CodeChef. He was also named a young global leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2011.
Divyank was responsible for the largest ever ad-tech deal in 2016 when he sold his company, media.net, to a Chinese consortium for $900 million.