The Key to Become a Billionaire in India

The billionaire list for 2007 is out. No exceptions and no surprises for the top 2 positions. Bill Gates ($56 billion) held on to his top slot and Warren Buffet ($52 billion) retained his place next to Gates. Overall, US continues to dominate the list with not less than 415 billionaires. This all is pretty regular.

But, what’s different this year is the India has displaced Japan as the country with the Asian country with the maximum number of billionaires (36 to be precise). All the Indians put together had a net worth of $191 billion. That is $3.6 billion each.

The Indian Battalion is led by Mukesh Ambani (#14, $20.1 billion) closely followed by Anil Ambani (#18, $18.2 billion) and Lakshmi Mittal (#5, $32 billion) takes the bronze pot.

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Ok.. this is a list that comes out every year. This is a list, which for people, other than those who actually feature on the list, is nothing more than a casual chit chat over lunch, fag, tea or coffee. Obviously, no matter how much I would like to be otherwise, I fall under the second category. And any dreams of making to this list are easily swept aside by just one look at my bank balance, my pay slips and my genealogy.

So, like a typical person of my category, my first reaction on reading this list was one of AWE: “Man these people are RICH”.

This was followed by JEALOUSY: “BUGGERS!!!”.

Third reaction was HOPE: “How can I make one of these guys adopt me?”.

Infact, the third reaction held on to me for some time. So much So that I had even started scribbling down a “Adoption Sales Pitch”, to one of these billionaires, in my head. Probably, since I have a wife and a kid, I could use “3 for the cost of 1” tag line to make my sales pitch look more attractive.

But, soon after being given dagger sharp looks by wife on discussing this adoption idea with her, I dropped the idea.

You can say I have a bug in me. It’s a bug which doesn’t let go of thoughts so easily. (The fact that I am working for one of the Billionaires on the list didn’t help either). Hence, in the evening, while my son was busy watching shin chan and wife was busy running after him to feed him dinner, I started thinking about the list again. But this time I thought of it from a more strategic point of view. I used the basics to analyze the situation.

My objective: To figure out what makes these people so rich.

My Tools: very basic - What, When, Why, Where, and How.

After running through the histories of these people I realized that, unlike what I would have wanted to believe, not all their wealth can be accounted to their Genealogy. Ok, few of them did inherit legacies but the inheritance only gave them a good base to stand on. And, they have made it to this elite list purely on what they have done post inheritance.

Another, interesting thing I realized that the actions of these extraordinary gentlemen is purely driven by the state of their national economies. For e.g. Bill Gates, Warren Buffe – they are part of Developed economies. Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, Lakshmi Mittal, Ruia’s, Godrej etc are part of developing economies.

If one looks closely one can see that in the developed economies the people who are in the list are entrepreneurs and are linked with the new business economy drivers like internet, financial markets etc. Whereas in the developing economies like India &, Mexico the one’s who are on the list are old economy men. By old economy here I mean these people control natural wealth components which have supply constraints. Other explanation is people who are not into technology (search engine type) related businesses.

In Mexico, Carlos Slim Helu has his roots in telecom. In India, Mukesh Ambani has Oil & Gas, Anil Ambani has Coal, energy business, telecom, Tata’s have steel, telecom, energy business among many other natural resources, Ruia’s have oil rigs & Telecom, Godrej has real estate, Mittal is the steel baron. Azim Premji is the only one who doesn’t fit this bill.

What does this indicate? No matter how much the new generation businesses may have grown and India may be on the way to become the global outsourcing or IT hub these business have still not broken into the big league. A basic google search will show you that many of the biggest software biggies in India are still much much smaller than the old economy guys.

Thus, the way I see it, if you want to be big in India, forget software look for minerals. I don’t know whether I can reach the billionaire list. But, since I feel I have unlocked the key to become rich in India I am off to my local coal trader and am gonna make a separate room in my house just to stock coal and other mineral resources. You never know, these small chunks of coal bought by me from here on may be bought by these billionaires in future for billions of dollars. (Hoping ofcourse, that my wife doesn’t shoot down this idea also).