Indians took 17 years on an average to make their first billion— and it has gotten a lot faster recently

In India, Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person with over $60 billion in his pocket. The 64-year old took over his father’s business, Reliance Industries, in 1984 and became a billionaire in 13 years, according to OLBG research. Radhakishan Damani, the owner of Avenue Supermarts and second richest in the country, took 15 years to enter the billionaire’s club.

Whereas Shiv Nadar, the founder and chairman of IT giant HCL, spent more than two decades to earn a billion dollars.

Vijay Shekhar Sharm took 17 years to make a billion dollars.

His company One97 communications was born in 2000 — which used to offer mobile content like cricket scores, ringtone, jokes etc. But, he pivoted his business in 2010 and launched a digital payment app Paytm.

He got his breakthrough when millions of Indians were forced to switch to digital mode of Paytm after demonetisation in 2016. A year later, he was named the youngest billionaire in the country. And now, Paytm has also diversified to financial services and travel insurance.

This is in line with a lot of entrepreneurs in the digital economy. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person and owner of Amazon, made his first billion after 5 years after he opened his e-commerce company in 1994. The quickest billionaire to earn this milestone was eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who became a billionaire three years after he started his company in 1995.

Interestingly, there are some entrepreneurs in the world who spent more than five decades to earn their first billion dollars such as Singapore’s paint magnate Goh Cheng Liang, who opened his first factory in 1955 but didn’t appear on the Forbes Billionaires List until 59 years later, in 2014.