India’s newst edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah’s co-founders Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari and quick commerce soonicorn Zepto’s co-founder Kaivalya Vohra are the newest to join the millionaires’ club, according to a report by Hurun India and IIFL Wealth.
Vohra, 19, has in fact become the youngest Indian and the first teenager to have personal wealth of at least Rs 1,000 crore, thanks to an over 50 percent rise in the valuation of Zepto, which he founded with Aadit Palicha in 2020, the report titled IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022, showed. Palicha, 20, has also made it to the list. The report further showed that 10 years ago, the youngest Indian on the ‘Rich List’ was aged 37.
Alakh Pandey, 30 and Prateek Maheshwari, co-founders of PhysicsWallah, also made their debut on the list. According to the report, both Pandey and Maheshwari have personal wealth of Rs 4,000 crore and are ranked 399th on the list of 1,103 individuals. PhysicsWallah, an edtech company founded during the pandemic by Pandey and Maheshwari, raised its first round of funding worth $100 million in June, that valued the company at $1.1 billion.
The IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 showed that the number of Indians to have personal wealth of Rs 1,000 crore or more topped 1,100 for the first time in 2022. Moreover, the number increased by 96 in 2022. Through the last five years, the number has gone up 62 percent.
Also read: Gautam Adani tops IIFL Wealth Hurun list of richest Indians, startup founders make a big entry
Beauty and e-commerce platform Nykaa’s founder Falguni Nayar became the riches self-made Indian woman in the IIFL Wealth Hururn India Rich List 2022, as her wealth topped that of Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. While Nykaa, which got publicly listed in November last year, has fallen over over 40 percent since its listing, Nayar saw her wealth mushrooming by 345 percent during the year.
Also read: IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List | 43 real estate developers make it to the list
Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO of the world’s most-valued edtech company Byju’s, saw his personal wealth rising 26 percent to Rs 30,600 crore during the year, while Kunal Shah, founder of Cred saw his wealth increasing three-fold, the report showed. Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm saw his wealth decline by 74 percent to Rs 4,900 crore after shares of his fintech unicorn tumbled post-listing, according to the report. Paytm’s share price has fallen over 60 percent since its listing in November last year.
For the first time, 100 startup founders, with a cumulative wealth of Rs 5,06,000 crore and average age of 40, featured in the IIFL wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022, the report showed. It further showed that 65 founders of 37 unicorns made it to the list in 2022.
With private market investors pouring billions of dollars into startups over the last two years, valuations of companies saw an unprecedented surge. Investors minted over 40 unicorns in 2021 alone, and have minted more than 20 already in this year, despite a funding slowdown.
“India’s bench strength or the pipeline of entrepreneurs can be understood best from the startup ecosystem. IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 has 100 entrants from 59 start-ups and going forward, the share of start-ups is likely to increase manifold. This has resulted in more young entrepreneurs entering the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List,” said Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and Chief Researcher, Hurun India.
“The IPOs (initial public offerings) of some of the high-profile startups realigned the valuation spread between institutional and retail investors. Having said the aforementioned, we believe the startup wealth creation will continue, although with ‘new rules in the game," Rahman added.
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