Hurun Rich List 2023: The richest Indian professional manager is… no, not Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella

Jayshree Ullal is the president and CEO of Arista Networks (Image credit: jullal/Facebook)

The Hurun India Rich List 2023, released yesterday, reveals that India has 259 billionaires – up 38 compared to last year. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani overtook Gautam Adani to reclaim the title of the richest Indian with a net worth of Rs 8,08,700 crore. Adani, whose wealth more than halved in the last year, took the second spot on the list with a net worth of Rs 4,74,800 crore. They were followed by Cyrus Poonawalla, Shiv Nadar and Gopichand Hinduja.

Meanwhile, Byju Raveendran, founder of edtech startup Byju's, exited the list on the back of many company valuation markdowns by investors.

The Hurun India Rich List 2023 also identified professional managers who have built an impressive net worth. Professional managers in this list consist of individuals who joined a business after it has been founded and helped it grow. These managers were given stock options from which they have created their wealth.

Jayshree Ullal was named the richest Indian professional manager. The CEO of Arista Networks has a net worth of Rs 20,800 crore. Ullal was born in London and raised in Delhi. She was named the CEO of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company, in 2008.

The second person on the list of richest Indian professional managers is Thomas Kurian of Oracle, who has a net worth of Rs 15,800 crore. Born in Kerala, Kurian started his career with McKinsey & Company. He joined Oracle in 1996, and went on to become the company’s president. Since 2019, Kurian has served as the CEO of Google Cloud.

Ajaypal Singh Banga, currently the president of World Bank, has a net worth of Rs 7,600 crore. He studied at Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and IIM-Ahmedabad before starting his career with Nestle. Banga has served as the CEO and executive chairman of Mastercard.

At the fourth spot is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who, like Banga before him, was educated at Hyderabad Public School. Nadella has a net worth of Rs 7,500 crore. Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks took the fifth spot on the list with a net worth of Rs 7,400 crore.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai did not make the top 5 – he ranked sixth on the list of richest Indian professional managers with a net worth of Rs 5,400 crore. Pichai, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, joined Google in 2004.