Forbes 40 Richest Indians

Forbes has come out with its list of the 40 richest Indians. It has the usual suspects: Laxmi Mittal, Ambani’s, Azim Premji, etc… However, the list just seems to be thrown together with no clear methodology. It appears they picked the names most thrown around in the media, checked to see if they were part of a publicly traded company and reported their share holding pattern, jeez anyone can do that. By including Laxmi Mittal on the list they must mean Indians anywhere in the world, b/c Laxmi does not reside in India. If that’s the case, then I’m not sure how they could have friggin’ missed people like Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins, Desh Deshpande of Sycamore Networks, or Rajvir Singh of Cerent (which was sold to Cisco for USD 6.9 billion in 1999). This article would have been more interesting had they included the myriad of Indian politicians that could have made the list. Yes, it’s tough to nail down those figures but then again that’s the job of a Forbes Magazine – hard hitting facts, not fluff. Full list