Two startup founders from Bengaluru have topped the Hurun India 40 & Under Self-Made Rich List for 2022. Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath and Ola Cabs cofounder Bhavish Aggarwal have topped the list with a wealth of Rs 17,500 crore and Rs 11,700 crore respectively. Divyank Turakhia, who is the founder of Media.net based in Dubai, is third on the list with a wealth of Rs 11,200 crore. The list has been released jointly by IIFL Wealth, a Mumbai-based wealth management firm and Hurun India, a research and events group. 

The list includes 53 Indian-origin entrepreneurs aged under 40 and has 15 new entrants, all of whom are startup founders. Neha Narkhade, co-founder of Confluent – a streaming data technology company – is the youngest self-made woman entrepreneur in India on the list. The entrepreneurs in the under 40 list had a cumulative wealth of around Rs 1,85,000 crore, registering an increase of 12% compared to last year. With 14 individuals on the list, Bengaluru is the most preferred city as a business headquarters, followed by New Delhi and Mumbai with eight individuals each. Zepto’s Kaivalya Vohra is the youngest ‘self-made entrepreneur’ on the list. 

“The IIFL Wealth Hurun India 40 & Under Self-Made Rich List acknowledges and encourages the young leaders who believed in innovation and successfully transformed the industry. We are proud to witness that there are almost 53 Indian-origin entrepreneurs who are aged under 40. The current wave of startups and entrepreneurship has set global benchmarks and is driving domestic players to compete with foreign competitors. It is encouraging to witness that the entrepreneurial ecosystem has emerged as one of the pillars of the new knowledge economy and created significant employment, wealth and opportunities,” said Shajikumar Devakar, Executive Director, IIFL Wealth. 

Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and Chief Researcher, Hurun India, said the unprecedented wealth creation in the past five years in India, when other countries are stalling and are in a recessionary mode, reaffirms India as the ‘engine of growth for the global economy’.