Top 10 Entrepreneurs in India

India is the largest global democracy, and its GDP has grown remarkably in recent decades. Even though India's significant levels of economic inequity keep many impoverished, the nation has a significant tradition of entrepreneurial and capital growth. No surprise, India has yielded a plethora of billionaire entrepreneurs.

1. Dhirubhai Ambani

Dhirubhai Ambani (1932-2002) was an Indian tycoon who began his career selling traditional delicacies to religious pilgrims. His company flourished quickly, and he developed and broadened into telecommunications, power production, telecommunications, consumer products, and logistical.

Reliance Industries is, at present, India's largest private enterprise and a Fortune 500 company. Mukesh Ambani, Ambani's son, is the current CEO of Reliance Industries and has a net worth of seventy billion dollars, as per Forbes.

2. Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata

He was India's first pilot and has served as the Chairman of Tata & Sons for 50 years. Moreover, he founded Air India International, India's first international airline, and he was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1992.

After serving for the TATA family enterprise, he ventured out on his own and started TATA Airlines, which later became contemporary Air India.

JRD Tata has been one of India's most innovative businessmen. He was a visionary pilot and the founder of one of India's major industrial conglomerates. His motor company, Tata Motors (TTM), is notable for producing affordable autos that practically all ordinary Indians can purchase. JRD Tata is a descendant of Jamsetji Tata, who established the TATA group of corporations in the mid-nineteenth century. TATA owned approximately 100 different firms spanning various industries when JRD Tata died.

3. Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy

N. R. Narayana Murthy is one of the magnificent minds behind establishing the Indian transnational conglomerate Infosys Ltd. He is an entrepreneur that has been regarded as one of the finest Indian businessmen of the modern era. Murthy has played a significant role in the success of Infosys, a major IT firm that delivers business consulting, information technology, and outsourcing services.Murthy showed glimpses of grandeur from a young age and obtained his schooling from one of India's best technology schools. He worked for Patni Computer Systemsin Pune before deciding to start his own business.

He is generally referred to as the "Father of the Indian IT Industry," having served as CEO of Infosys from 1981 to 2002 and subsequently as its chairperson until 2011. Infosys has a current valuation of over $90 billion as of July 2021.

4. Shiv Nadar

With a small investment of a few thousand dollars, Shiv Nadar launched HCL Infosystems in 1976, manufacturing calculators and microcomputers. HCL quickly extended to Singapore and the Far East, making sales of over 1 million rupees not long after. HCL's success has made Nadar a billionaire with a net worth of $23.8 billion. HCL has trotted the surfs of the emerging IT sector for four decades under his governance and has been at the front line of technology innovation since 1976.

His pioneering energy and belief in technology and development molded the company's trajectory. Thanks to him, HCL Technologies is now one of the world's largest IT technology and R&D divisions.

5. Lakshmi Niwas Mittal

Lakshmi Niwas Mittal is an Indian businessman who started his career in his father's steel company. Due to family feuds, he went out on his own and founded Arcelor Mittal, which is today one of the world's leading steel producers (MT). Arcelor Mittal has an enterprise value of $32.96 billion as of April 2020. At the same time, Mittal's personal wealth is estimated to be over $18.38 billion.

6. Ghanshyam Das Birla

Ghanshyam Das Birla (1894-1983) was a well-known Indian entrepreneur who founded his first enterprise, a cotton and textile mill, in the early 1900s. Birla's companies had expanded to encompass considerable paper and sugar manufacturing by 1919. Birla Group had grown into a multi-sector worldwide corporation by the time he died.

Kumar Mangalam Birla, his great-grandson, now heads the corporation and has a combined wealth of $13.4 billion.

7. Dilip Shanghvi

Dilip Shanghvi founded Sun Pharmaceuticals in 1982 with ten thousand rupees (about $200) investment. Shanghvi knew what he was doing as the son of a pharmacy wholesaler. Sun India is now the largest pharmaceutical firm in India and has grown to approximately 2 trillion rupees through gradual progress and a series of acquisitions. Shanghvi's net worth is currently estimated to be around $11.8 billion. Sun Pharmaceuticals is the country's largest pharmacy firm in the United States and one of the leading Indian acute medication pharmaceutical companies. Sun Pharma is the fifth-largest specialty generics company in the world.

Dilip Shanghvi is the chairperson of the governing board at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay - IIT Mumbai. He is one of the country's wealthiest persons. Dilip Shanghvi has been appointed to the RBI's central board committee, consisting of 21 members.

8. Azim Premji

Azim Premji is the former director of Wipro Industries (WIT), a multifaceted software and technology business that has been compared to Microsoft by many. As a result of his honorary title as "czar" of the Indian IT industry, Premji is often alluded to as India's Bill Gates. He is apparently worth $9 billion.

9. Mukesh Jagtiani

Mukesh "Micky" Jagtiani is an Indian entrepreneur who has lived in the United Arab Emirates for most of his life. He attended a school in Bombay and Beirut before moving to London to attend accounting school. Soon after, while operating a taxi, he founded his first company, which developed into the commercial and real estate Behemoth Landmark, which is now headquartered in Dubai.

Landmark has also ventured into e-commerce in recent years. Jagtiani is estimated to be worth $3.6 billion.

10. Ardeshir Godrej

Ardeshir Godrej (1868-1936), a co-founder of the Godrej Group, a multinational conglomerate with holdings in real estate, consumer items, security, home appliances, and industrial instruments. After a series of failed endeavors into hand-crafted medical equipment, Ardeshir and his sibling found success in locksmithing.

The Godrej Group was formed in 1897, and its firms now generate over $11 billion in revenue. Adi Godrej, his grandson and the company's CEO, is valued at $2.7 billion.

Final Thoughts

Entrepreneurship has a long history in India, yet it has its own character. Many Indian entrepreneurs started from poor origins and built empires shared down through generations as family-owned businesses rather than starting technological companies. That isn't to imply that prospective Indian entrepreneurs won't concentrate on technology and contribute to the country's economic development.

However, we must remember that the GDP per capita in this nation of over one billion people is just $1,900 annually, indicating it as one of the world's greatest rates of economic disparity.