Adani again tops as number one beating Mukesh Ambani among hundred ultra rich
Forbes has released its India Rich List for 2026, and for the first time in three years Gautam Adani and his family have returned to the top position as India’s richest. According to the list Adani’s wealth is assessed at Rs 10.85 lakh crore, or about 122 billion dollars, while Mukesh Ambani has slipped to second place with Rs 8.30 lakh crore, about 93 billion dollars. Compared to last year Adani’s wealth has increased by Rs 1.99 lakh crore, whereas Ambani’s wealth has declined by Rs 1.80 lakh crore due to pressure on margins in various businesses including Reliance Retail. The combined wealth of India’s 100 richest stands at Rs 96.23 lakh crore, of which Adani alone accounts for about 11.3 percent and Ambani about 8.6 percent. In this year’s top ten, Savitri Jindal is at third with Rs 3.83 lakh crore, Lakshmi Mittal at fourth with Rs 3.34 lakh crore who has jumped from 12th to fourth, followed by Sunil Mittal with Rs 3.17 lakh crore, Cyrus Poonawalla with Rs 2.73 lakh crore, Shiv Nadar with Rs 2.64 lakh crore, Dilip Shanghvi with Rs 2.53 lakh crore, Kumar Mangalam Birla with Rs 2.23 lakh crore and the Hinduja family with Rs 2.04 lakh crore. Despite this, more than half of the rich have seen their wealth decline as the rupee fell 8.5 percent and the stock market fell 9.5 percent this year. The challenges posed by AI have hit the wealth of IT leaders like Shiv Nadar, Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy, and 11 people including Nandan Nilekani have dropped out of the list.
If we look at the larger picture before and after 2014, the contrast becomes clear. Before 2014 Mukesh Ambani was far ahead and had been the undisputed number one for eight consecutive years. In 2010 his wealth was 27 billion dollars and he was number one for the third year. In 2011 he was worth 22.6 billion dollars while Gautam Adani was worth 8.2 billion dollars, meaning Ambani was 2.7 times bigger. In 2012 also Ambani remained number one for the fifth year with 21 billion dollars, Lakshmi Mittal was second with 16 billion dollars and Adani was not even in the top ten. In 2014, when the present government came to power at the Centre, Ambani was number one with 23.6 billion dollars and Adani was at 11th rank with 7.1 billion dollars, with some Forbes analyses putting his wealth even lower at 2.8 billion dollars at that time, which means Ambani was 3.3 to 8 times bigger than Adani.
After 2014 Adani’s wealth grew at a meteoric pace, growing about 20 times in eight years. In 2020 Adani was worth 25.2 billion dollars while Ambani was worth 88.7 billion dollars. By 2022 Adani’s wealth had peaked at around 140 billion dollars and he briefly became the second richest person in the world, growing from 7.3 billion dollars in 2014 to 140 billion dollars. This growth was linked to the central government’s push for self-reliance and privatization, especially in sectors like solar energy where Adani Green was set up around 2015 and is today the country’s largest renewable player, and in airports where after winning contracts to run six airports including Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangaluru and Guwahati in 2019 and taking over Mumbai airport from GVK in 2020, the Adani Group now controls 25 percent of the country’s air passengers. In 2023 after the Hindenburg report Adani slipped to 84.1 billion dollars, just below Ambani’s 84.4 billion dollars. And now in 2026 he has again overtaken Ambani to become number one with Rs 10.85 lakh crore against Rs 8.30 lakh crore, and in just the last two years alone the market capitalization of his listed entities has more than doubled to over Rs 20 lakh crore.
