Here are Hyderabad's billionaires whose net worth grew despite COVID pandemic

Hyderabad: Murali Divi, a US-trained scientist and founder of Hyderabad-based Divi Laboratories - a drug research firm - is among the 50 notable entrants to India's top billionaires' list. The entrepreneur saw an increase in his worth by 72 per cent raising his total worth to Rs 54,100 crore, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2021, released on Tuesday.

Murali Divi now shared the space with Kumar Mangalam Birla, 53, of the global conglomerate Aditya Birla Group whose wealth rose by 61 per cent to $9.2bn, according to the report.

While among the billionaires from Hyderabad, PV Ramprasad Reddy of Aurobindo Pharma group bagged silver with Rs 22,600 crore net worth. He was followed by B Parthasarathi Reddy and family of Hetero drugs group, who stood third with a net worth of Rs 16,000 crore.

The list of billionaires included Dr Reddy's laboratories chairman, Kallam Satish Reddy, at Rs 12,800 crore net worth, and GV Prasad and G Anuradha of Dr Reddy's lab at Rs 10,700 crore net worth.

While the value of Megha Engineering and Infrastructure, that had bagged many plum projects across India and is known to be the fasted growing infra company stood at 138th in India, its founder, P Pitichi Reddy now has a net worth of Rs 10,600 crores. All in the family, P V Krishna Reddy the face for MEIL is worth Rs 10,200 crore

While another known name in the infra industry is Rameswar Rao Jupally who owns assets worth Rs 10,500 crore.

Interesting to note that M Satyanarayana Reddy- director of Hyderabad based MSN Pharma group who was recently raided by the sleuths of Income tax and resulted in seizer of Rs 1.66 crore cash, features in the list of billionaires.

Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf said, "Despite the disruption caused by Covid-19, this year has seen the biggest wealth increase of the last decade. A stock markets boom, driven partly by quantitative easing, and flurry of new listings have minted eight new dollar billionaires a week for the past year. The world has never seen this much wealth created in just one year, much more than perhaps could have been expected for a year so badly disrupted by Covid-19". Pertinent to note that the above billionaires from Hyderabad belong to the pharma and real estate sector.

India

Mukesh Ambani, 63, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd. is the 8th richest man in the world, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2021. His wealth saw an increase of 24 per cent to $83 billion (bn) in the financial year 2020, as per the report. The list ranked 3,228 billionaires from 2,402 companies and 68 countries.

It is interesting to know that India has seen a rise of the rich. The country now has 208 billionaires of which 177 live in the country. While Gautam Adani & family is among the billionaires whose increase in wealth was notable saw. The Adani family saw an almost double to US$32bn, on the back of Adani Green Energy growing to a US$20bn valuation. While, NR Narayana Murthy, 74, was up 35% to US$3.1bn. His son-in-law Rishi Sunak, 40, is the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and the most powerful person in the British government after the prime minister, the report said.

Hero Cycle founder Pankaj Munjal made to the list for the first time with US$1.2bn on the back of the surging e-bike demand in India.

Key Take away from the Huran Report 2021

1. China and USA make up over half of the known billionaires in the world.

2. India stands third with 177 billionaires

3. Beijing is a home to 145 billionaires and is the world's billionaire capital for the 6th consecutive year.

4. CoronaVirus drove up billionaires from healthcare and retail fastest.

5. Tiktok founder Zhang Yiming( though the app saw a ban in India) saw an up in his assets by 40 bn.

7. By continent Asia accounts for 51 % of the world billionaires.

8. Blockchain made 17 billionaires

9. Retail is the most booming industry followed by consumer goods, Media and entertainment and software service.

10. The Hurun Global Rich List 2021 ranked 3228 billionaires from 2402 companies and 68 countries.