The World’s Richest Tamils according to Forbes 2017 Billionaires list

The Forbes list of the ‘World’s Billionaires’ 2017 was published recently and consists of 2,043 people with a combined net worth of $7.67 trillion. From this list there are over 100 billionaires who have links to the Indian subcontinent.

Here are three of the world’s richest Tamils according to Forbes!

Shiv Nadar – 102 on the list

When the list was published on the 20th March 2017 his net worth was $12.3B and was ranked no.102 on the Billionaires list. Today, a little over 24 hours since the list was published, he is worth $13Billion and has jumped to the 94th spot!

Indian IT pioneer Shiv Nadar cofounded HCL as a garage startup in 1976 to make microprocessors. Today, he chairs HCL Technologies, a $6.6 billion (revenues) company that is among the country’s top software services providers. Like its rivals, HCL has been on acquisition streak. Last year, HCL agreed to acquire Mumbai software firm Geometric, controlled by the billionaire Godrej family, in a share swap valued at $190 million. More recently, it bought Butler America Aerospace, a defence and aerospace services firm, for $85 million. His eponymous Nadar University is partnering with Dell for technology projects in areas such as cloud computing and big data.

Ananda Krishnan – 219 on the list

Up $100 million from $6.5 Billion, since the list was published on the 20th March 2017

Ananda Krishnan lost his spot in 2017 as Malaysia’s second-richest person amid falling shares of his telecom outfit Maxis and oilfield-services-provider Bumi Armada. He’s now No. 3. In 2016 he agreed to merge his debt-laden Indian telecom firm Aircel with Indian billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications. But India’s Supreme Court threatened to auction Aircel’s spectrum because Krishnan hasn’t responded to summons in a long-running federal investigation of how he had acquired Aircel. (Krishnan has denied any wrongdoing). In another setback, Krishnan’s key lieutenant, Augustus Ralph Marshall, who is also embroiled in the same case, has left the group in a reportedly acrimonious parting. And Saudi Telecom is said to be mulling the sale of its 16.2% stake in Maxis. Krishnan has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. His only son is a Buddhist monk in Thailand.

Kalanithi Maran – 474 on the list

Up $400 million from $3.8 Billion, since the list was published on the 20th March 2017

The sun is shining again on media baron Kalanithi Maran’s Sun TV Network, a regional television heavyweight founded by him in 1993. Sun’s array of 33 channels in four Indian languages reaches 95 million households in India as well as the south Indian diaspora in 27 countries around the world. The broadcaster’s shares more than doubled in the past year, boosting his wealth by $1.6 billion. Maran and his politician brother Dayanidhi, a former telecom minister, got a reprieve when a court recently dismissed all charges against them in a long-standing telecom corruption case.

The full list features over 2,043 Billionaires across the globe, with over 100 from the Indian subcontinent. click here to view the list.