Alakh Pandey of PhysicsWallah and Kaivalya Vohra of Zepto are been included in Hurun India's Rich List for 2022

Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, co-founders of India's newest edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah, and Kaivalya Vohra, co-founder of rapid commerce unicorn Zepto, are the newest members of the millionaires' club, according to a research by Hurun India and IIFL Wealth.

The valuation of Zepto, which Vohra and Aadit Palicha launched in 2020, has increased by more than 50%, making the 19-year-old Vohra the youngest Indian and the first teenager to have personal fortune of at least Rs 1,000 crore, according to the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 study. 20-year-old Palicha has also been added to the list. The survey also revealed that the youngest Indian on the "Rich List" was 37 years old ten years ago.

The co-founders of PhysicsWallah, Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, both 30 years old, also made their list debut. Both Pandey and Maheshwari are listed as having personal worth of Rs 4,000 crore in the report and are placed 399th out of 1,103 people. PhysicsWallah, an edtech startup formed by Pandey and Maheshwari during the pandemic, raised its first round of funding in June for $100 million, valuing the business at $1.1 billion.

The IIFL Worth Hurun India Rich List 2022 revealed that for the first time in 2022, there were more than 1,100 Indians who had personal wealth of at least Rs 1,000 crore. Furthermore, in 2022, the number rose by 96. The number has increased by 62% during the past five years.

Falguni Nayar, the founder of the beauty and e-commerce site Nykaa, surpassed Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw in terms of wealth, making her the richest self-made Indian woman according to the IIFL Wealth Hururn India Rich List 2022. While Nykaa, which went public in November of last year, has declined by more than 40% since its listing, Nayar saw a 345 percent increase in her fortune over the course of the year.

According to the research, Byju Raveendran, the founder and CEO of the most valuable edtech business in the world, experienced a 26 percent increase in his personal wealth to Rs 30,600 crore during the year, while Kunal Shah, the founder of Cred, saw a three-fold increase in wealth. According to the report, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma's wealth decreased by 74% to Rs 4,900 crore as the shares of his fintech unicorn fell after its debut. Since Paytm's stock was listed in November of last year, its share price has decreased by more than 60%.

The IIFL wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 contained 100 startup founders for the first time, with a combined fortune of Rs 5,06,000 crore and an average age of 40, the research revealed. Additionally, it demonstrated that in 2022, 65 founders of 37 unicorns made the list.

Over the previous two years, entrepreneurs have received billions of dollars from investors in the private sector, which has caused a record-breaking rise in company valuations. Despite a reduction in funding, investors nonetheless managed to create over 40 unicorns in 2021 alone, and they have already created more than 20 this year.

"The startup ecosystem offers the best insight into India's bench strength or pipeline of entrepreneurs. There are 100 participants in the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022, including 59 start-ups, and moving forward, the share of start-ups is projected to rise significantly. More young entrepreneurs are now included in the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List as a result, according to Anas Rahman Junaid, MD and Chief Researcher at Hurun India.

The value gap between institutional and retail investors was realigned by the first public offerings of some well-known firms. Having said that, we think that wealth creation through startups will continue, albeit with "new rules in the game," Rahman continued.