Mint Quick Edit | India’s count of billionaires is on a roll
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. One way of gauging how a country is faring is to track the wealth of its people. India, by that measure, is doing well.
According to the latest Billionaire Ambitions Report of UBS, its count of billionaires rose to 185 in 2024, making India home to the third-largest group of individuals with over $1 billion in assets. This marked an addition of 32 billionaires over the past year, a 21% rise. In comparison, top-ranked America, which now has 835 billionaires, added 84 of them in the past year, an 11% increase.
Meanwhile, China saw its billionaire count fall by 93 to 427. Broadly, these numbers reflect the performance of stock markets, with Indian and American shares having gained more value than Chinese. India has had the added advantage of an unprecedented retail share-buying boom since 2020.
For wealth expansion at the top of India’s pyramid to be sustainable, however, lower slabs need to do better. While wider equity ownership is a positive sign, the country’s median asset count, a figure that divides the population into upper and lower halves, is far below America’s. The “wealth effect" of fast-rising stock prices needs to be a more effective driver of broad consumption trends in India.
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