Forbes Richest Indians

Ask an ordinary Puneite, who the richest person in Pune could be and I think you'd hear the names Chitale (of the bakarwadi fame) or Kirloskars (of the diesel engine fame). The truth is neither of them figure in the Forbes list of the 100 richest Indians. There are definitely a few surprises...

Mumbai tops the list in terms of the number of people as expected. The real surprise for me was that one of the 2 Marathi names on the list, (#51) Virendra Mhaiskar actually runs the company that operates the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Crazy! It makes me wonder if politicians are unofficially some of the richest people in the country but just aren't listed here because all their money is stashed in the Swiss banks.

The richest person in Pune is Cyrus Poonawalla of the Serum Institute and the stud farms. A very long time ago, I studied at the Bishop's school. This was from Kindergarten to class second, and one of my classmates was actually Mr Poonawalla's son. I don't remember a whole lot from those days but I do remember that his son would have his name embroidered on his shirt and that his lunch was decidedly more lavish than other ordinary mortals like self, wish servants to set up a table and serve him from a pretty tall box everyday. Eventually we moved to the other side of the city so I started attending Loyola High School. There were probably a lot of rich kids there including sons of prominent builders, companies like Finolex and car dealers.

Anyways here's a link to the list of richest people in Pune