Richest tech founders in India: from IT pioneers to Zerodha, Zoho and Perplexity

India’s richest tech founders are still led by the families behind the country’s IT services giants. The M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026 valued Roshni Nadar Malhotra and family, the HCLTech fortune built by Shiv Nadar, at ₹2.79 lakh crore, and Azim Premji and family of Wipro at ₹2.63 lakh crore 1.

But the shape of Indian tech wealth is changing. IT services fortunes shrank in 2026 on fears that AI will replace outsourced work, while founders of platforms such as Zerodha, Zoho, Eternal and Perplexity have joined the rich lists. Dollar figures are converted at ₹94.05, the rate on 7 November 2026.

India’s richest tech founders in 2026

Founder or family	Company	Latest estimate
Roshni Nadar Malhotra and family (Shiv Nadar)	HCLTech	₹2.79 lakh crore, Hurun 2026 1
Azim Premji and family	Wipro	₹2.63 lakh crore, Hurun 2026 1
Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath	Zerodha	₹98,900 crore combined, Hurun 2026 1
Sridhar Vembu and siblings	Zoho	$6.0 billion (about ₹56,400 crore), Forbes India 2025 2
Aravind Srinivas	Perplexity	₹21,190 crore on debut, Hurun 2025 3

Lists use different dates and methods, so the table mixes the most recent available estimate for each founder. Hurun counts most fortunes as families; Forbes often names an individual.

Shiv Nadar and the HCLTech fortune

Shiv Nadar co-founded HCL and was India’s richest tech billionaire on the Forbes India list for 2025, at $33.2 billion (about ₹3.1 lakh crore) 2. His daughter, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, now chairs HCLTech, and Hurun counts the fortune under her name and family, making her India’s richest woman and fifth overall on its 2026 list 1.

Azim Premji and Wipro

Azim Premji turned his family’s cooking-oil company into the IT services group Wipro and has given a large share of his wealth to charity, especially education 1. That helps explain why estimates vary so widely: Forbes valued him at $10.8 billion in its 2025 India list, while Hurun’s 2026 figure for Premji and family is ₹2.63 lakh crore 2 1.

Why IT services fortunes shrank in 2026

Advances in AI tools raised fears that they could replace some of the outsourced work that made India’s IT companies rich. By mid-February 2026, Premji’s wealth had fallen $3.87 billion to $23.6 billion and Nadar’s $2.93 billion to $34.6 billion, as Wipro and HCLTech shares fell 4. The Forbes India Rich List 2026 found that tech titans including Nadar, Premji and Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy faced headwinds from AI-led automation in IT services 5.

The new generation: Zerodha, Zoho, Eternal and Perplexity

Newer founders have built fortunes from consumer platforms and software products rather than services:

• Zerodha: Hurun valued the Kamath brothers’ combined wealth at ₹98,900 crore in 2026, from the stock brokerage they founded in 2010 1.
• Zoho: the software company founded by Sridhar Vembu has made several family members billionaires. Radha Vembu appears on Hurun’s 2026 list, and she ranked second among self-made women in 2025 behind Arista Networks’ Jayshree Ullal 6 3.
• Eternal (Zomato and Blinkit): Deepinder Goyal topped Hurun’s 2025 list of self-made entrepreneurs, with Eternal valued at ₹3.2 lakh crore, up 27% in a year 7.
• Perplexity: Aravind Srinivas debuted on the 2025 Hurun India Rich List at ₹21,190 crore, the youngest billionaire on the list 3.

Hurun’s 2026 list also recognised artificial intelligence as a separate wealth-creation sector for the first time 8.

Where India’s tech founders rank overall

Tech founders are well represented but no longer dominate the very top of India’s rich lists, which are led by infrastructure, energy and industrial families, as covered in India’s richest business families. Most of the country’s IT wealth is concentrated in one city, which we profile in our next piece on Bengaluru’s billionaires. Explore more founders on our technology and software hub.

Sources

[1] Gulf News, M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026, 28 September 2026. [2] Free Press Journal, India’s richest tech billionaires for 2025 (Forbes), 14 October 2025. [3] Stocktwits, M3M Hurun India Rich List 2025 highlights. [4] Business Today, Five billionaires lose $21 bn in 2026, 19 February 2026. [5] Channel IAM, Forbes India Rich List 2026. [6] Gulf News, Hurun India Rich List 2026 wider list. [7] Business Standard, Goyal tops Hurun’s 2025 self-made list. [8] Business Standard, India’s richest in 2026, 23 September 2026.

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