Palan Balakrishnan: Return of Indian moguls

What does Wipro chairman Azim Premji have in common with 33-year-old computer whiz-turned-gambling czar Anurag Dikshit? The answer: They are two of the 23 Indians who've made it on to Forbes magazine's billionaires list, the wealth chart of the super-rich.

That's an extraordinary performance for a country where a large chunk of the population is still stuck below the poverty line. To put the numbers in perspective, let's compare it with more affluent parts of the world.

Australia and New Zealand combined have six, led by James Packer at US$5 billion ($7.7 billion). And India is now officially several moneybags ahead of China, which has eight billionaires on the list, even after its helter-skelter pursuit of riches. In fact, India is only just behind Japan, which has 27 billionaires on the list.

As Forbes editor Luisa Kroll pointed out when releasing this year's list, one in 10 of the new billionaires in it is from India. And Premji, the poster-boy of India's software revolution, who heads the fast-growing Wipro, is worth US$13.3 billion compared with China's richest tycoon, Larry Rong Zhijian (US$1.7 billion).

But forget about the Dikshits and Premjis of this world for a moment. What's astonishing about the Indian list is the sheer diversity that it throws up and the speed at which these moguls have built their empires. There are three software billionaires and two pharmaceuticals czars. In addition, there's an airline baron, a telecom giant and even a media magnate. There's even one far-sighted wind farm king who's worth a billion or so. Tulsi Tanti keeps a scrupulously low profile and owns the biggest wind farms in Asia.

The country's booming economy and sharemarkets have, inevitably, helped these moguls to accumulate wealth swiftly. Take ex-army officer turned real estate baron Kushal Pal Singh who owns DLF, a gigantic developer. Starting three decades ago, Singh has accumulated vast swathes of farmland in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi. Today, Gurgaon is Delhi's fastest-growing suburb, a glass-and-concrete jungle of office blocks and apartments.

Or, look at Sunil Mittal who, back in the 1980s, started a small factory to make telephones. Today, his Bharti Tele-Ventures is the country's largest mobile-phone operator and sixth-largest listed company. Ten years ago, Mittal would not have made it to even the B list of Indian businessmen, forget the A list, as one business commentator noted last weekend.

It's the same tale of swift growth from relatively modest beginnings for another highflyer, Naresh Goyal, who owns the 54-aeroplane Jet Airways, India's largest airline. Goyal started out as a travel agent about 25 years ago and made his debut on the runway in the early 90s when private companies were allowed into the aviation business. Today, he has more planes in the sky than Indian Airlines, the Government-owned firm which was once the country's only carrier.

What do wealth charts tell about a country and society in general? At one level, it's pure bubble-gum journalism that feeds the public's prurient interest in the wealthy people behind the great corporations. But, look at it another way, and it's an indication of the way the world and the sharemarkets are moving.

Step back to about 1990. That was an era when globally the richest men - they were all men - were Japanese property czars who owned apartment blocks and vast swathes of real estate in places like Tokyo and Osaka. Then the Japanese property bubble burst and the land tycoons vanished from the pages of history. What happened next? Step forward Microsoft and Bill Gates, who has been the world's richest man for 12 years without a break. The ascension of King Bill marked the arrival of the software era.

More recently, the climb of tycoons like Lakshmi Mittal (fifth spot) and the Russian Roman Abramovich is an indication of how old economy commodities like oil and steel have once again become key factors globally.

Back in the late 90s, Indian billionaires used to be even rarer than the endangered tigers of the subcontinent. The two or three who did make it to the Forbes list had accumulated their fortunes after decades of patient graft. Forbes usually passed over the subcontinent without giving it a second glance.

Asia's billionaires in those years came mostly from Japan and Hong Kong, with the occasional Singaporean just for variety.

That began to change around 2000 during the global infotech boom when Indian software giants like Infosys and Wipro began their globe-straddling adventures and suddenly found their stocks soaring stratospherically. As the sharemarket shot upwards, the parsimonious Premji was, at one point, worth well over US$20 billion. That's quite a nest egg for a man who just a few years ago drove up to India's Infotech Ministry in a tiny subcompact Suzuki 800 and was thus missed by the team waiting to escort him upstairs. He has now upgraded to a Toyota Corolla.

Lately, Forbes has been adding more Indian tycoons to its list each year - there were 12 last year. But this year has seen a bumper crop. Most of them, including Premji, were fairly unknown barely two decades ago. Premji's Wipro, at that time, had just diversified from making soap and vegetable oil to personal computers. The new moguls have risen swiftly and thrived in an economy that was once rigidly controlled and which is still bureaucratic.

Also, the new moguls have overtaken the established business houses that had been around for decades.

The fact is that such swift growth would probably not have been possible in an earlier, more dirigiste, era.

Time was when entrepreneurs with fire in their bellies had to leave India in order to get free rein. Aditya Birla wandered all over South-east Asia setting up companies and factories and Lakshmi Mittal ran away from the country to become the world's steel king, notes T.N. Ninan, publisher of leading daily Business Standard.

It should, of course, be pointed out that some of the Indians on the Forbes list don't actually operate in the country. Mittal, for instance, holds an Indian passport but does not make a gram of steel in this country.

Similarly, one of the newest billionaires, Dikshit, is a youthful computer whiz who graduated from the elite Indian Institute of Technology.

Dikshit devised the computer systems that enabled the recently floated Partygaming to become one of the world's largest online gambling firms. He lives in Gibraltar where the company is based. Partygaming's only link with India is a call centre for customers.

Nevertheless, there's no doubt that India is getting wealthier. And, hopefully, there's more to it than a great deal of wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few.

* Paran Balakrishnan is associate editor of the Telegraph, Kolkata.

Who whats to be a billionaire?

* 23 Indians made it on to Forbes billionaires list.

* In Asia, India now lags only Japan, which has 27 billionaires.

* China, in comparison, has eight billionaires.

* The Indian list is remarkable for its diversity.

* Billionaires range from Asia's largest wind farm owner to pharmaceutical manufacturers .