THE new sunday express MAGAZINE Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Preeti Shenoy Anu Aggarwal Ravi Shankar Luke Coutinho Mata Amritanandamayi Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment january 18 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 The New Richie Rich Money has a makeover in India, where young billionaires are rewriting what wealth looks like O By Tanisha Saxena Raj Hadvani nce upon a time, India’s billionaires wore safari suits or pinstripes—men who built empires, not apps in dorm rooms. Wealth was slow, methodical, and inherited like heirlooms. But that era of inherited opulence is fading. Today India’s money is young, caffeinated, , and restless—coded in algorithms, pitched in boardrooms, and scaled on cloud servers. The script has flipped from the slow burn of old money to the meteoric rise of digital wealth. A generation ago, India’s richest were scions of steel, cement, and textile dynasties—Tata, Birla, Bajaj. Business was tangible, hierarchical, and legacy-driven. Now, the richest young Indians, men and women trade in ideas, not inventory They build unicorns out of code and . confidence. Their inheritance is ambition. According to the Hurun Global Rich List (2025), India now counts 358 billionaires— over six times its 2012 tally Even . more telling: the average age of new billionaires has slipped into the early 30s. The youngest, Zepto founders Kaivalya Vohra and Aadit Palicha, became billionaires before 24. Meanwhile, millionaire households have nearly doubled in four years to 8.7 lakh. What’s powering this surge? Technology policy and a new kind of , , hustle. Digital India and Startup India have turned Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi-NCR into fertile playgrounds for innovation. Economist Dr Rajeev Ahuja calls it “the inevitable outcome of ecosystem economics.” He explains, “Cities like Bengaluru have become India’s Silicon Valley precisely because they offer an ecosystem of investors, mentors, regulatory support, and government incentives.” In other words, the young dream— and the ecosystem backs their audacity Contrast this with the . post-Independence decades, when India’s middle class aspired to stability not speed. , Success meant a government job, a steady salary a modest house. , Even tycoons like Dhirubhai Ambani or Adi Godrej embodied patience and permanence. Today’s founders build over weekends. Director and CEO of Gopal Snacks Total net worth: `400 crore But meteoric rises also create spectacular collapses. The unravelling of ed-tech giant Byju’s—once valued at $22 billion—has become a cautionary tale. There is also a quieter phenomenon: the exodus of wealth. More Indian billionaires and multi-millionaires are renouncing residency for mobility regulatory flexibility , , and geopolitical insurance. Reports now place India among the top three nations for high-net-worth outflows, with Dubai, Singapore, London, and Zurich as preferred destinations. Meanwhile, beneath the glitter of young money lies a widening economic canyon. The top one per cent controls over 40 per cent of national wealth; the bottom half owns less than three per cent. As sociologist Dr Tabish Hashmi puts it, “We are witnessing a paradoxical transition—hyper-visibility of young success alongside hyper-precarity for those outside the innovation economy If old .” money was opaque and inaccessible, new money is seductive and performative. Yet the symbolism of young wealth is undeniable. The average Indian millionaire today is younger, riskier, and more globally connected. They negotiate on WhatsApp with Palo Alto investors, juggle multiple ventures, and think in Gaurav K Singh Founder and CEO of Womeki Group Company net worth: `350 crore Devita Saraf Chairman and chief executive officer of Vu Technologies Total net worth: `1,800 crore “I actually coined the term luxury in technology. Tech was about science over senses—low excitement, low experience. I wanted it to feel like fashion, cars, jewellery.” Young Old Dominantly from tech, fintech, SaaS, EV, D2C, renewable energy Dominantly from commodities, manufacturing, energy, real estate, banking and infra Median time to billion-dollar valuation: 5-12 years Median time to billion-dollar fortune: 20-40 years India now has 110-plus unicorns driven almost entirely by external capital & Wealth is valuation-driven and intangible Global-first revenue models Banks, NBFCs, public markets, family capital were primary sources Wealth is asset-heavy plus tangible Domestic-first scale with later international expansion Operate in lightly regulated or newly regulated sectors (tech, crypto, AI, D2C); policy still catching up to categories they create Operate in highly regulated sectors (energy, telecom, steel, ports, banking); they require state coordination, licenses, concessions, tenders Public thought-leadership developed via podcasts, LinkedIn, X, TED, content Low social visibility, high institutional visibility Comfortable taking secondary exits, ESOP buybacks, partial cash-outs Wealth remains locked in operating companies for decades Kanika Tekriwal CEO and co-founder of private aviation company JetSetGo Total net worth: `400 crore Trishneet Arora Founder & CEO, TAC Security Total net worth: `1,100 crore “People don’t buy products—they buy trust. And trust has to be earned every day. First it was survival. Then scale. Now it’s impact. My journey is still a beginning.” Siddharth Shankar Founder of Tails Trading Total net worth: `14,490 crore valuations. In the last decade, India has produced over 110 unicorns, and with each one, a new batch of 20- and 30-something founders has joined the ranks of the ultra-rich. They invest in NFTs, green tech, AI, and the next big disruption. From a `75,000 loan in Ludhiana to the helm of a global cybersecurity firm, 31-year-old Trishneet Arora’s journey feels like a slow, stubborn act of belief. When he launched TAC Security as a teenager, cybersecurity in India was still a fuzzy idea. A school dropout by choice, Arora learned early that risk could be a form of faith. Today , TAC Security works with governments and Fortune 500 firms, yet his language remains spare: “People don’t buy products—they buy trust. And trust has to be earned every day .” That belief shapes TAC’s culture, where mistakes become “learning systems, not blame systems,” and leadership is more composure than command. “When the environment is volatile,” he says, “your team borrows composure from you.” By 2030, Arora wants India to be the most cyber-secure nation in the world. In 2024, he entered the Hurun Rich List as one of India’s youngest billionaires (`1,100 crore), a detail he brushes aside: “My journey is still a beginning.” That same hunger for transformation—and the refusal to wait for permission— defined Ritesh Agarwal, 31, a few years later, though in a very different space. In 2013, while most 19-year-olds were chasing exams, Agarwal was knocking on hotel doors and mapping rooms, convinced India’s budget stays could be better. That instinct became OYO. Asked what his younger self understood about ambition, he pauses. “I understood it as a refusal to accept the world as it was,” he says. “I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. I treated Turn to page 2