Methodology: How We Did It

The Rich List is yet another marquee addition to Fortune India’s bouquet of annual special properties. It's an ode to the entrepreneurial spirit in a $3.12 trillion economy — a Special Issue that chronicles the wealth of India's biggest billionaires.

In early 2022, we started off with a comprehensive exercise by parsing numbers of BSE and NSE listed entities from the Capitaline database to come up with a working list of India's richest promoters. We partnered with one of India's leading bespoke wealth management firms, Waterfield Advisors, as our knowledge partner. Together we deliberated, curated and, finally, agreed upon the methodology that will form the crux of this special issue in the years to come.

The list is primarily based on the wealth of entrepreneurs of listed companies. In instances where the entity is unlisted, we have used the price-earnings (PE) multiple of the sector's index and, in the absence of an industry index, we have considered the PE multiple of the closest listed company from the same industry, sector or line of business. In some instances, sales to market cap, net worth, or similar ratios were also applied. Our valuation for start-ups is based on the last available equity financing round as disclosed by Traxcn, the Bengaluru-based database provider.

We reached out to each individual and business family mentioned in the list to seek details of the listed and unlisted wealth, besides seeking additional information regarding investments outside of the listed business: such as stakes in other public companies (where the holding is less than 1%) and in other private entities/ start-ups, real estate, automobiles, jewellery, overseas assets, cryptos and so forth.

In case of families where there is no formal split despite individual family members running independent businesses, the wealth is consolidated with the current head of family or immediate successor. In most cases, wealth of siblings and spouses is clubbed together.

In the case of business houses, where there are cross holdings among listed and unlisted entities, the highest value has been considered. For instance, if a promoter's listed entity (A) holds a stake in another listed entity (B) of the same group, and, if the promoter's holding value in A is lower than the holding value of A in B, we have considered the value of A's holding in B.

The wealth estimate is based on stock prices are as on August 16, 2022; shareholding as of December 2021. The rupee-dollar exchange rate considered is 79.74, as of August 12.

The list is confined to Indian citizens & families domiciled in the country or those who derive a vast majority of their wealth from businesses within India. Given the dynamic nature of the markets, the wealth estimates may vary from the day Fortune India Rich List is available on stands and on the web.

While Fortune India and Waterfield have strived to capture India's richest billionaires, there may still be other businessmen and families whose wealth may not have been adequately captured by Capitaline and other databases.