Gautam Adani has reclaimed the top spot as India's richest person from Mukesh Ambani, according to a new list released by Hurun. Adani's wealth grew by nearly 13% year-on-year to $96 billion. India now has nearly 400 billionaires.
Gautam Adani and his family have regained the top spot among India's richest families (DR)
The 2026 Hurun India rich list reveals that the number of ultra-rich Indians on the list has risen by an impressive 80% in just the last 5 years. Hurun defines ultra-rich as those with wealth of ₹1,000 crore or more ($104 million). As of 2026, the list features over 1,800 ultra-rich individuals or families, of whom 391 are dollar billionaires.
The cumulative wealth of India's ultra-rich population is about $1.96 trillion, greater than Italy's GDP, according to the report.
Since 2012, the wealth of India's ten richest has grown about sevenfold. Over the same period, the S&P 500 grew just about fivefold. The comparison illustrates the extraordinary wealth that businesses have created in India.
Newsletters
Cet article vous plaît ?
Inscrivez-vous à nos newsletters pour recevoir les dernières publications et analyses selon nos 4 thématiques:
NewsGen ZAnalysesTrends to watch
Notable figures in the top 10
Over the past decade, most of India's ten richest have held on to a position in the top 10, even as their ranks shifted year on year. The sharpest rivalry has been at the very top. Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani have traded the number one spot, five times in the last five years. While Adani’s wealth has seen massive swings over the years. He topped the charts in 2026. Ambani's wealth climbed steadily for years, but it slipped by 10% to about $90 billion this year.
The third richest person in India saw the highest jump in wealth in 2026. L N Mittal, the owner of Arcelor Mittal, one of the world's largest steelmaking and mining corporations, saw his wealth jump by a massive 93% year-on-year to $35.35 billion. Mittal is an Indian citizen who lives in Switzerland and Dubai.
The top 10 richest people in India collectively hold about $408 billion, which is roughly 21% of the list's total wealth of $1.96 trillion.
There is only one woman in the top 10. Roshni Nadar Malhotra, 45, of HCL, a tech company, ranks fifth on the list, slipping two places as her wealth dipped by 2%. Based in New Delhi, she leads the country's software and services fortunes, just ahead of Azim Premji of Wipro.
Which industries contributed to India’s rising wealth
The energy sector contributed to more wealth than any other industry on the list, accounting for about 10.4% of the total. What makes this striking is that only a small group of people sit in this industry. So a few very large fortunes, such as those of Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, carry the numbers.
Pharmaceuticals comes second, at roughly 9.6% of the total, followed by Software & Services and Metals & Mining. Together, the top five industries account for 41% of the list's wealth.
Manufacturing is where a lot of the new faces came from. Industrial Products added the most new rich people this year, and it also has the most people on the list overall.
The newest money, though, is coming from Artificial Intelligence. It added fewer people, but each new entrant is worth about five times as much as a new entrant in Industrial Products, on average. So AI is small in headcount but accounts for a much larger share of new wealth.
China has overtaken the U.S. as home to the world’s largest billionaire population. Despite slow economic growth and the persisting real-estate downturn, China added 287 billionaires in the last one year, bringing its count to 1110. In comparison, the U.S. added only 130 new billionaires, reaching a total of 1,000, according to a wealth report by Hurun research firm.
Europe’s ultra-high-net-wealth population rose by 14.5% last year. However, this growth is expected to slow down in the coming years to 5.6% per year on average until 2030, according to a wealth report by Altrata.
