10 richest men in INDIA

1/ Lakshmi Mittal, age 54

Named after the Hindu deity of fortune and prosperity, the steel tycoon is “quintessentially Indian”, despite having lived in Britain since the 1970s, says The South China Morning Post. Born in a remote village, he got his start when his family moved to Calcutta and opened a small steel mill. Within 20 years, Ispat International was hailed as “the best steel firm on the planet”. The 2004 merger with rival International Steel Group also made it the largest. Today, Mittal Steel, of which he owns 87.4%, continues to expand, but ironically, it does no business in India. It’s “one of my biggest disappointments”, says Mittal.

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2/ Azim PREMJI, age 60

“The father of the Indian outsourcing phenomenon”, Premji got his major break in 1978 when IBM pulled out of India, says The Independent. Premji had inherited Wipro, then a company selling cooking fat, on his father’s death in 1966 and decided to move into the nascent computing business. He still owns 82% of the New York-listed company: it has annual revenues of £1bn, while clients include Nokia, Microsoft and Prudential. Still, this tycoon belongs to the old-banger school of billionaires: his ancient Ford Escort is, he says, “a lucky car”.

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3/ Mukesh AMBANI, Age 49

News that a feud between the warring Ambani brothers had been resolved sent Indian stocks to new highs last summer, says The Economist. The brothers are heirs to the $22.5bn Reliance Group built up from a simple textile-trading business by their former school-master father – and they had been at daggers since his death in 2002. Luckily their mother was finally able to broker a truce (after taking advice from religious astrologers), says Newsweek, and in the ensuing demerger, Mukesh, “a family man and meticulous planner”, kept the group’s petrochemicals flagship, Reliance Industries, and Indian Petrochemicals Corp.

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4/ Anil AMBANI, age 48

At the height of the feud (see story above), Anil Ambani achieved notoriety for alleging that his brother had broken corporate governance regulations, says BusinessWeek. He now seems “almost his usual self – brash, natty and cheerful”. The Wharton graduate, married to a Bollywood actress, hasn’t done too badly from the split, says the FT: his new group controls Reliance’s telecoms and finance firms.

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5/ Kushal Pal Singh-age 74

The former army officer joined his father-in-law’s firm in 1971 and transformed it into India’s biggest real-estate developer. His big breakthrough, says The Times of India, was transforming a barren expanse of land outside Delhi into Guargaon: “the most competitive city-suburb in India”. The development even spawned a new word: Guppie – a Guargaon yuppie.

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6/ Sunny Mittal-age 48

India’s “most ambitious telecom entrepreneur” describes himself as “the product of economic reform”, says BusinessWeek. He started a bicycle-parts business at a precociously early age before moving into telephony in the 1980s. In the past ten years, Mittal has grabbed 22% of India’s mobile-phone market. Recent attempts to diversify have proved less successful, says the FT. Mittal had hoped to overhaul India’s food chain and make it a leading exporter. “This is work in progress,” he says.

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7/ Kumar Mangalam BIRLA-age 40

The head of the close-knit Birla clan inherited control of the commodities and electronics powerhouse on the death of his father in 1995. Many feared the LSE graduate wouldn’t be up to the job, says BusinessWeek. He has proved them wrong, but his preference for privacy has recently been hit by an elderly cousin leaving a chunk of the empire to her accountant, says The Hindu. Birla has vowed to win it back. The case continues.

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8/ Tulsi Tanti-Age39

The textile producer moved into wind energy ten years ago, says Forbes. In October, he listed Suzlon Energy, in which he and his siblings own 70%. He is now expanding into the US and China.

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9/ Palongi MISRTY-age70

Often described as the “king-maker of Corporate India”, the secretive construction magnate is the biggest shareholder in Tata Sons, a holding company with a big stake in India’s largest software company, Tata Consultancy Services, says The Australian.

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10/ Anurag DIKSHIT-age 34

The software brain behind PartyGaming is a “non-gambling, vegetarian Hindu”, says the FT. Before his 1988 chance meeting with co-founder Ruth Parasol, he’d honed his programming skills in the US at AT&T and Lucent. A workaholic based in Gibraltar, he keeps a low profile.

Forbes Global presents our inaugural list of India's 40 wealthiest businesspeople, the third in a series of Asia-Pacific wealth rankings. The list extends our coverage in the country beyond individual billionaires.

Having embraced economic liberalization and foreign investment, India is a bright star in the region. Gross domestic product growth doubled to 8% in fiscal year 2003, putting it among Asia's fastest-growing economies. Since 2000, the market capitalization on Mumbai's stock exchange has more than doubled to $340 billion.

While almost all members do business in India, citizenship was enough to be eligible. Thus the inclusion of Lakshmi Mittal (whose steel business is registered in the Netherlands) as India's richest person. Because the wealthy in India have traditionally held assets through a maze of investment firms or trusts and in family members' names, it is often difficult to get individual holdings. So for most list members their net worths indicate family fortunes. We've highlighted only wealth we could document; thus some fortunes, like those of certain secretive real estate tycoons, may have been left off