NEW DELHI: With a fortune of Rs 37,570 crore, Godrej Group’s Smitha V Crishna is the wealthiest woman in India, according to Kotak Wealth Hurun-Leading Wealthy Women 2018 list. The third generation heir of Godrej is followed by Roshni Nadar (net worth Rs 30,200 crore), CEO & Executive Director of homegrown IT behemoth HCL; Indu Jain (Rs 26,240 crore) of Bennett Coleman and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Rs 24,790 crore) of Biocon.
Crishna sits on the board of Godrej Industries and owns one-fifth of the Godrej Group along with her brothers. In 2014, she made news with the purchase of the bungalow belonging to late atomic physicist Dr Homi J Bhabha for Rs 371 crore.According to the list, Shaw of Biocon is the wealthiest self-made woman entrepreneur, whereas a majority of the names in the top-10 list hold position in companies set up their family members or come from a business clan. For instance, Kiran Nadar, who holds the fifth place with an estimated wealth of Rs 20,120 crore, is wife of HCL founder Shiv Nadar. She is a trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation and an art collector.
Two other self-made billionaires in the list are London-born and New Delhi-bred Jayshree V Ullal, CEO of cloud-networking company Arista Networks, with an estimated wealth of Rs 9,490 crore and Shradha Agarwal, co-founder of Chicago-based Outcome Health, with an estimated wealth of Rs 8,200 crore. Ullal ranks eighth while Agarwal ranks tenth in the list. Agarwal is also the youngest self-made wealthiest woman in the list.Leena Gandhi Tewari, who chairs USV Pharma, is ranked sixth with an estimated wealth of Rs 10,730 crore, while Sangita Jindal, wife of steel magnet Sajjan Jindal, ranks seventh with a net worth of Rs 10,450 crore.