India’s economy is currently the 4th largest in the world after the USA, China, and Germany, and it’s growing steadily. India is projected to overtake Germany in FY26 to become the 3rd largest economy in the world.
While we are gradually growing in terms of GDP, a substantial contribution to it comes from India’s startup ecosystem. India’s startup ecosystem is worth over $354 billion, making it the third largest globally. India currently has 118 unicorns as of 2025, in comparison to just 8 in 2015. (A unicorn is a startup whose net worth has reached up to or above a $1 billion valuation, which is approximately Rs. 8,500 crore). The wealth of these startup founders reflects their success in building and operating their businesses over the years with sheer passion and hard work. In this article, we have listed below some of India’s youngest billionaires and how they made it to that mark.
Nithin Kamath & Nikhil Kamath (Net worth: $8.4Bn, Age: 45 & 38)
Nithin and Nikhil are siblings who built their fortune through Zerodha, one of the leading players in providing broking services to Indian retail stock investors. It is particularly known for its discount brokerage services. Nithin Kamath is an engineer who studied at Bangalore Institute of Technology and is currently the CEO of Zerodha. Nikhil is the Co-founder and CFO at Zerodha and has also founded Gruhas and True Beacon, an investment management firm. Nikhil hosts his own renowned podcast channel on YouTube, “WTF is with Nikhil Kamath,” where he invites renowned business personalities from various industries. He has invited famous personalities like Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft) twice, Kumar Mangalam Birla (Chairman of Aditya Birla Group), and the Prime Ministers of India and New Zealand. The Kamath brothers reside and operate most of their businesses from their beloved city, Bengaluru, Karnataka.
Ravi Modi (Net Worth: US$3.3Bn, Age: 47)
Ravi is a first-generation entrepreneur hailing from Kolkata who started his business with a meagre seed capital of Rs. 10,000. During his teens, he would visit his family-owned 140 sq. ft clothing store in Kolkata, where he learned about the clothing business. He went on to begin his own business by the name of Vedant Fashions in 2002, which he named after his son. He focused on traditional Indian wear as a category, as there was no particular brand that dealt in such attire back then. He entered this disorganized market of Indian wedding and celebration apparel with the brand name “Manyavar” and later launched another brand called “Mohey.” Today, Vedant Fashions has more than 600 stores in India and 11 stores abroad.
Ritesh Agarwal (Net worth: $2Bn, Age: 31)
Ritesh Agarwal hails from Cuttack, Odisha. In 2011, he founded “Oravel Stays” as India’s counterpart of Airbnb. The company launched as OYO Rooms in 2013 after winning a grant of US100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship, founded by Peter Thiel (CEO of PayPal and a renowned American entrepreneur and venture capitalist). In 2018, the company managed to raise US1 billion. In 2023, Ritesh became the youngest “Shark” to appear on Shark Tank India. Currently, OYO Rooms has a network of 2,200 hotels operating in 154 cities across India and generates employment for over 1,500 people.
Binny Bansal (Net worth: $1.4Bn, Age: 43)
Binny is the Co-founder of the famous e-commerce platform, Flipkart. He was the Chief Operating Officer and was later promoted to Chief Executive Officer of Flipkart in January 2016. Prior to co-founding Flipkart, Binny was rejected twice by Google and was later hired by Amazon, where he worked for nine months. He quit Amazon to co-found Flipkart with his friend from IIT Delhi, Sachin Bansal. Flipkart was taken over by the US retailing giant Walmart in 2018. Binny resigned from the board of Flipkart in 2024 and made a complete exit from the company after selling his remaining stake. He recently announced the launch of his new startup, Opptra, which focuses on building franchise business portfolios for branded consumer goods in the Asian market.
Harshil Mathur & Shashank Kumar (Net worth: $1Bn each, Age: 34)
Harshil and Shashank met each other at IIT Roorkee and later co-founded Razorpay in 2014 in Bengaluru, Karnataka. According to information available on LinkedIn, Harshil worked as a Wireline Field Engineer at Schlumberger and Shashank worked as a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft. Razorpay was valued at $7.5 billion and also received funding of $375 million during its latest round. The business is backed by some of the most prominent investors like Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, and Matrix Partners. Today, Razorpay is one of the most prominent players in India’s digital payment landscape. Harshil and Shashank came up with the idea of building Razorpay when they were frustrated by the cumbersome online payment systems in India.
(So, next time when you’re frustrated enough with something, think about a viable business plan to solve the problem—you might just find yourself on a billionaire list someday!)
Written by Miit Dholakia
