Nykaa's Falguni Nayar declared top woman entrepreneur in Hurun's list, Ghazal Alagh youngest

Falguni Nayar is the founder and CEO of Nykaa.

Nykaa’s Falguni Nayar was the top woman entrepreneur in ‘India’s Top 200 Self-made Entrepreneurs of the Millennia 2023’ list. The list was released by IDFC First Private Banking and Hurun India.

Falguni Nayar is the founder and CEO of Nykaa. Ghazal Alagh, co-founder of Mamaearth and Winzo’s co-founder Saumya Singh Rathore were the youngest women on the list. They are both 35.

Meanwhile, Radhakishan Damani, veteran investor and founder of retail chain D-Mart, lead the list with a with a market capitalisation of Rs 2.38 lakh crore. He was closely followed by Sachin and Binny Bansal, founders of e-commerce platform Flipkart.

The list, released on November 30, also included Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal and Dream 11 promoters Bhavit Sheth and Harish Jain.

The entrepreneurs featured on the list came from 23 cities across India – Chennai, Pune, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. According to the report, more than half of India’s self-made entrepreneurs are based in Bengaluru, Mumbai or Gurugram. While Bengaluru had 129, Mumbai had 78 followed by Gurugram and New Delhi at 49.

“The list is dominated by Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Gurugram, emphasizing their status as major hubs for entrepreneurship,” IDFC and Hurun said.

38 founders from the list graduated from IIT Delhi, making it the most preferred undergraduate college for the top 200 self-made entrepreneurs. IIT Mumbai and IIT Kharagpur followed with 24 and 20 entrepreneurs respectively.

Kaivalya Vohra, 21, the founder of grocery delivery app Zepto, is the youngest entrepreneur on the list.

“The list demonstrates the vibrance of Indian entrepreneurship across age groups, gender, and geography with one-third of entrepreneurs featured in the list aged under 40 and the eldest on the list is 80 years old. It is interesting to note that Bengaluru occupies the top choice for most of the founders in the list to start their companies,” Anas Rahman Junaid, Hurun India’s MD and Chief Researcher said.