Financial Services adds 28 rich listers with ₹1.02 lakh crore wealth; rupee depreciation keeps 168 Indians out of billionaire club: Report

The M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026 finds the rupee’s fall from ₹61.01/$ in 2014 to ₹95.63/$ has pushed the dollar-billionaire threshold from ₹6,101 crore to ₹9,563 crore, masking 168 potential billionaires in dollar terms.

The weaker rupee is masking a significantly larger pool of dollar-denominated wealth among India’s richest, with the country potentially having nearly 600 dollar billionaires if the rupee-dollar exchange rate had remained at 2014 levels, Anas Rahman Junaid, Founder and Chief Researcher, Hurun India , highlighted. The M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026 puts India’s current dollar-billionaire count at 391. At the 2014 exchange rate, the number would rise to 559, a difference of 168 individuals. In response to an ETBFSI question on how much the weaker rupee is masking India’s dollar wealth, Junaid said the size of India’s dollar-billionaire pool would have been about 50% higher if the rupee-dollar exchange rate had remained unchanged. Advt

“I think this is a clear example, that the size of dollar billionaires would have gone up by 50% if the rupee and dollar had stayed the same,” Junaid said. He also compared India’s potential dollar-billionaire pool with China’s, saying that while China had “almost 1,000 US dollar billionaires” in the latest Hurun China Rich List, India could potentially have been at “about 600 dollar billionaires” if the rupee and dollar had remained at the same level. “That's only the top,” Junaid said, adding that the impact would become more pronounced further down the wealth pyramid, where a larger number of individuals could have been affected in dollar terms.

Source link