Equity analysis: India’s billionaire boom isn’t a sign of a hunky-dory economy

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In a recent talk at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, economist Sanjay Reddy noted a startling fact about India’s growth process. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2024, India ranked 142nd out of approximately 190 countries, with a nominal per capita GDP of around $2,700.

Yet, it is also home to one of the largest and fastest-growing populations of billionaires in the world. With 200 billionaires in 2024, according to Forbes magazine, India ranks third globally in its billionaire count, trailing only the US and China. This anomaly—of a high number of billionaires co-existing with low average income—raises critical questions about wealth distribution, economic inequality and the nature of India’s growth story.

The extent of this anomaly becomes clearer when we examine the ratio of dollar billionaires to average income between 1997 and 2024, plotted against average income, as shown in the graph alongside. In a rough sense, this ratio is a measure of wealth concentration, since a larger number means that more billionaires are being ‘supported’ by the income of the average citizen. The picture tells a stark story.

The US, China and India were the largest, second and fifth largest economies in the world, respectively, in 2023. Over the past 25 years, India’s economy has grown roughly eightfold in nominal terms, but the ratio of dollar billionaires to average income has surged dramatically, far outpacing both the US and China. When China had a similar per capita GDP to India’s current level, which was back in 2003, it had only about 10-15 billionaires.