Billionaire Mukesh Ambani has moved three notches up to become the fifth richest man in the world, a position he shares with Tesla founder Elon Musk and Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Ambani’s rise from the eighth position last month was buoyant on a series of fund-raising by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) for its wholly-owned subsidiary Jio Platforms.
The RIL Chairman and Managing Director’s networth rose to $70 billion, much higher than that of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett ($76 billion) and Google co-founder Sergey Brin ($69 billion), according to data collated by Hurun Research.
Ambani’s networth, four months into the Covid-19 pandemic stood at $66 billion.
“The increase in valuation of RIL is synonymous with the demographic opportunity presented by India. In addition to all the existing launches such as JioMeet and so on, value could be further unlocked when Jio Platforms forays further into digital offerings such as online gaming and when potential listing on Nasdaq,” Hurun India Managing Director and Chief Researcher Anas Rahman Junaid told BusinessLine.
On June 23, Ambani was the eighth richest man in the world, along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, while the other Indian in the global rich list was ‘Vaccine King’ Cyrus Poonawalla at 57th position.
According to Hurun Research, Mukesh Ambani, riding the digital wave, was expected to emerge as one of the five richest people in the world in the next two or three years.
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Since April 22, 2020, Jio Platforms (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Ltd) had raised a total of Rs 117,588.45 crore from global investors including Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR, Mubadala, ADIA, TPG, L Catterton and Intel Capital.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with a networth of $200 billion still tops the chart, followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ($110 billion), while French multi-national luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton SE group head Bernard Arnault is third (($94 billion).
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ($89 billion) in fourth position is the other billionaire in the list.
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