Bengaluru, the startup capital of India, now also has the distinction of being home to the majority of billionaires under 40 years of age. Hurun India Rich List 2019 released a list of the top 17 self-made entrepreneurs from Bengaluru alone, most of whom are 10. While Mumbai reported the majority of billionaires over the years, Bengaluru, led by Nithin Kamath of Zerodha and co-founder of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal, became the center of the millennial billionaire.
Bengaluru’s richest startup founders:
- Nithin Kamath, founder, and CEO of discount brokerage company Zerodha is the richest in Bengaluru’s young billionaire’s list. He’s only 39, and his net worth was reported to be about 6,600 crores. Founded in 2010, Zerodha now contributes to nearly 15 percent of Indian retail trading volume and is India’s largest retail stockbroker with more than 1.5 million customer base. Kamath began trading from his college days and even worked in a call center for three years as a telemarketing executive until he entered the bull’s eye with Zerodha.
- Sachin Bansal (around 6,100 crores) and Binny Bansal (around 5,500 crores) co-founders of Flipkart are next on the rich list. Each left their cushy jobs at Amazon to create India’s largest e-commerce platform and the most popular Flipkart start-up. Last year, for $16 billion, Walmart acquired a 77 percent stake in Flipkart. Sachin Bansal sold around $1 billion in his 5.5-6 percent stake. On the other hand, Binny’s investment in last year’s Flipkart was valued at $700-800 million. He offloaded his interest in tranches to other investors since then. With a net worth of ₹4,400 crores, Nitin Kamath’s brother Nikhil is the fourth richest young man in Bengaluru. “Bangalore’s thriving tech ecosystem can be attributed to the rise of the ‘millennial entrepreneur’. Bangalore has an appetite for taking business risks, testing new ideas, and executing them with great success,” Nikhil Kamath, co-founder, and CIO of True Beacon and Zerodha told Livemint. He said it is no surprise that Bengaluru is home to a plethora of successful technology-based businesses.
- The income of co-founder Byju Ravindran’s online tutoring software BYJU has been reported to be about 3,600 crores. The startup based in Bengaluru, a Think & Learn Pvt Ltd company, in July was valued at approximately $5.5 billion. Another co-founder of BYJU, Byju Ravindran’s wife Divya Gokulnath, is also on the Richie rich list as she is reported to have made some 1,800 crores.
- Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar, and Vaibhav Gupta, former Flipkart executives who propelled online B2B marketplace Udaan to the fastest Indian startup to achieve unicorn status, are also among the richest community in Bengaluru under the age of 40. Their net worth was measured at $3,500 each. Their start-up is now worth $2.5-3 billion.
- The net worth of Bhavish Aggarwal, 34-year-old, who runs Ola’s famous ride-hailing service, is estimated to be about 3,100 crores. The IIT-Bombay BTech engineer quit his lucrative job at Microsoft after two years of work to launch his own company ANI Technologies in 2010, which has grown rapidly to become India’s most admired startups. Now appears in the rich list is Ola’sother co-founder and the name of CTO Ankit Bhati. It is estimated that his net worth is around 1,400 crores.
- Both self-made entrepreneurs under the age of 40 from the 2019 IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List derive their wealth from technology-based projects. The average age of these self-made billionaires under 40 is 35 with a combined net worth of around 40,000 crores. Their wealth on average is around 4,200 crore.
- The youngest self-made businessman under the age of 40 is Oyo Rooms‘ 25-year-old Ritesh Agarwal, with a net value of around 7,500 crores. The wealthiest in the category of the young billionaire, however, is Media.net’s Divyank Turakhia (37). He’s based in Dubai.
