Indian billionaires who inherited their wealth and businesses

Benu Gopal Bangur is an Indian billionaire businessman, and the chairman of Shree Cement. Bangur was born in a 1931 in a Marwari business family in Kolkata. His grandfather Mugneeram Bangur was a Calcutta stockbroker who was given land by the Maharaja of Jamnagar to set up a cement plant. Mugneeram Bangur and his brother Ram Coowar Bangur started the Bangur business empire in the late 19th century. This business, called Digvijay Cement, was divided between Mugneeram’s sons. One son, Narain Dass Bangur, used it as a basis to make a fortune in property, shares, jute, paper, cement and power. In 1995, that business was split between five inheritors, of which Benu Gopal Bangur was one. With his brother Purushottam Das, he retained control over a number of businesses including Shree Cement. Benu then took personal control of Shree Cement, which he chairs. He has a $3.1 billion stake in Shree, which makes up most of his $3.4 billion fortune.

Indu Jain is a prominent Indian media personality who belongs to the Sahu Jain family and is currently the chairperson of India's largest media group, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., which is popularly know as the Times Group. This group owns the Times of India and other large newspapers. She inherited the Times Group after the demise of her husband. Ramakrishna Dalmia bought media company Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited (BCCL) in 1946. In 1948, his son-in-law, Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, took over, becoming the first chairman. He was replaced by his son Ashok Jain, who served as chairman until his death in 1999. Ashok’s wife Indu Jain, 83, now holds that role. Her stake in BCCL is $2.1 billion, taking her total fortune to $3.5 billion. She has three Samir Jain, Vineet Jain and a daughter.

Four close-knit siblings, Srichand, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok, control multinational conglomerate the Hinduja Group. Their group's businesses range from trucks and lubricants to banking and cable television. The empire was started by their father, Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja, who traded goods in the Sindh region of India (now Pakistan) before moving to Iran in 1919. The Hinduja brothers shifted their base from Iran to London in 1979. Srichand Hinduja and his brother Gopichand moved to London in 1979 to develop the export business; Prakash manages the group's finances in Geneva, Switzerland while the youngest brother, Ashok, oversees the Indian interests. Under the leadership of its chairman, Srichand, today the Hinduja Group has become one of the largest diversified groups in the world and a force to reckon with. However, on June 23, 2020, a first dispute came to light over court proceedings regarding a case for the control of the family's Geneva-based Hinduja Bank, which saw Srichand Hinduja, the eldest of the four brothers, and his daughter Vinoo, and the three brothers Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok on opposite sides.

Kumar Mangalam Birla (born 14 June 1967) is an Indian billionaire industrialist, and the chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of the largest conglomerates in India. Birla is a fourth-generation member of the Marwari Birla family from the state of Rajasthan. Kumar Mangalam Birla joined the family company at the age of 15, mentored by his father Aditya Vikram Birla, who made the teenager attend board meetings so that he could be quizzed later. At 22, Birla went to do his MBA at the London Business School. He took over as chairman of the Aditya Birla Group in 1995, at the age of 28, following the death of his father Aditya Vikram Birla. During his tenure as chairman, the group's annual turnover has increased from US$3.33 Billion in 1995 to US$48.3 billion in 2019.

Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry (born 1929) is an Indian-born Irish billionaire construction tycoon and chairman of Shapoorji Pallonji Group. His wealth is estimated to be US$14.4 billion as of October 2019. Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry’s father Shapoorji Pallonji co-founded construction company Littlewood Pallonji and Company in 1865, and went on to build factories for Tata Steel and Tata Motors, for which he took payment in shares. His son, Mistry, joined the diversified family business at the age of 18, building up a fortune of $13.2 billion as Littlewood - now known as the Shapoorji Pallonji Group - played a key role in the development of Mumbai as India’s commercial hub. The Imperial residential towers in the Tardeo area of Mumbai were developed by the company on the site of a former slum. Mistry’s share in the group is $1.9 billion, while his stake in Tata is worth more than $9 billion.

Azim Premji (born 24 July 1945) is an Indian business tycoon, investor, engineer, philanthropist, and former chairman of Wipro Limited. He is informally known as the Czar of the Indian IT Industry. Having inherited Western India Vegetable Products from his father Mohamed H. Hasham Premji, Azim is responsible for guiding Wipro through four decades of diversification and growth, to finally emerge as one of the global leaders in the software industry. Premji was born in Bombay, India in a Muslim family. His father was a noted businessman and was known as Rice King of Burma. In 1945, Muhammed Hashim Premji incorporated Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd, based at Amalner, a small town in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. It used to manufacture cooking oil under the brand name Sunflower Vanaspati, and a laundry soap called 787, a byproduct of oil manufacture. In 1966, on the news of his father's death, the then 21-year-old Azim Premji returned home from Stanford University, where he was studying engineering, to take charge of Wipro. The company, which was called Western Indian Vegetable Products at the time, dealt in hydrogenated oil manufacturing but Azim Premji later diversified the company to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. In the 1980s, the young entrepreneur, recognising the importance of the emerging IT field, took advantage of the vacuum left behind by the expulsion of IBM from India, changed the company name to Wipro and entered the high-technology sector by manufacturing minicomputers under technological collaboration with an American company Sentinel Computer Corporation. Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software.

Indian billionaire business magnate Mukesh Ambani, along with his brother Anil Ambani, inherited the Reliance Group conglomerate from the founder, his father Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani. Mukesh took the reins of the company with his brother Anil in 1985, and the brothers inherited the business in 2002 when their father died. But the group was split in 2005 after the siblings fell out. On 6 July 2002, Mukesh's father died after suffering a second stroke, which elevated tensions between the brothers as Dhirubhai had not left a will for the distribution of the empire in 2004. Their mother intervened to stop the feud, splitting the company into two, Ambani receiving control of Reliance Industries Limited and Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited in 2005 and the rest is history with Mukesh growing his business manifold. He is currently the richest man in Asia with a net worth of US$80.5 billion and as of 24 July 2020 he is listed on Forbes as the 5th richest person in the world.

Anil Ambani is the chairman of Reliance Group (also known as Reliance ADA Group), which was created in July 2006 following a demerger from Reliance Industries Limited. He leads a number of stock listed corporations including Reliance Capital, Reliance Infrastructure, Reliance Power and Reliance Communications. Along with his brother Mukesh, Anil too inherited the Reliance businesses left behind by their father Dhirubhai Ambani. Following a bitter feud with his brother and split in business, Anil received telecom, power, entertainment, and financial services business of the group. While Anil didn't manage to steer the business in the right direction, it can't be discounted that he was once the sixth richest person in the world. In February 2020, he declared before a UK court that his net worth is zero and he is bankrupt. However, he was eventually saved by the family (mainly his brother Mukesh) and it remains to be seen if he can turn his fortunes around again.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra is the chairperson of HCL Technologies and the first woman to lead a listed IT company in India. She is the only child of HCL's founder, Shiv Nadar. She worked in various companies as a producer before joining HCL. Within a year of her joining HCL, she was elevated as executive director and CEO of HCL Corporation. She subsequently became the chairperson of HCL Technologies after her father Shiv Nadar stepped down. Shiv Nadar himself came from humble beginnings, founded HCL in the mid-1970s and transformed the IT hardware company into an IT enterprise over the next three decades by constantly reinventing his company's focus. It remains to be seen what new levels Roshini will elevate the company toward. Her net worth is $4.9 billion making her the richest woman in India.

Rishad Premji is the son of the Wipro head Azim Premji and was named as the successor of his father. He was until recently the Chief Strategy Officer at Wipro and has taken over as Chairman of Wipro in July 2019. He was the Chairman of NASSCOM for the year 2018–19. After his MBA, Rishad worked with Bain and Co. for two years and then for four years with GE Capital in USA. In 2007, he joined his father's company Wipro as a business manager.