Getting Rich in India Is Easy — Becoming Ultra-Rich Takes Smarts, Not Assets
India’s booming markets minted new millionaires, but few built lasting wealth — proving asset growth alone doesn’t secure financial endurance.
The Gist
India's millionaire class is expanding rapidly, but transitioning to ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs) remains challenging.
- The number of affluent households in India surged by 445%, reaching 8.7 million from 2017 to 2025.
- Only 5% of high-net-worth individuals (HNI) progressed to UHNIs, with a mere 0.01% becoming billionaires.
- Entrepreneurship and active investing are crucial for significant wealth creation beyond passive asset ownership.
India is producing millionaires at a record pace. But those who make the journey from being rich to ultra rich are a much smaller club. To qualify as an HNI or high-networth individual, one needs to have $1 or $1.2 million. But the keys to the real vault with wealth of over $12 million or an ultra high-networth or UHNI individual don’t come easy.
Mercedes-Benz Hurun India Wealth Report 2025 found that during the golden era of wealth creation (2017-25), the number of affluent Indian households grew 445% to 8.7 lakh. Similarly, HNI households grew 202% to 5.9 lakh. But only 5% crossed into UHNIs, and a mere 0.01% became billionaires.
India’s millionaire class is ballooning, but breaking into the ultra-rich league still demands more than inherited assets or market luck — it takes sharp entrepreneurial bets and high-conviction investing. As wealth creation enters a new phase, the truly affluent are those turning from passive holders to active builders of businesses and capital.
Alpha Via Enterprise
Why do most stop short of the next step, even after building a solid base of assets? Experts say the first leg of wealth creation is often passive.
From 2021 to 2025, the Nifty50 rose from 14,700 to nearly 24,000; gold prices hit records; and real estate surged across major metros and other cities.
Such market momentum lifted many into the millionaire ranks. But to create outsized, compounding wealth, the game shifts from passive to participatory — from owning assets to building enterprises.
“One of the definitive paths to creating this kind of wealth is definitely entrepreneurship with focus,” Anas Rahman Junaid, founder and chief researcher of Hurun India told The Core. He said that only 2% of the Hurun Rich List (wealth over Rs 1,000 crore) were investors.
Individuals have generated wealth through entrepreneurship, such as Shashvat Nakrani, the co-founder of fintech major BharatPe, whose net worth swelled to Rs 1,340 crore. Trishneet Arora, who founded cybersecurity company Tac Security, has wealth of Rs 1,820 crore, as per the latest Hurun Rich List.
Apart from technology, many sectors became wealth creators in the last five years like metals and mining; chemicals and petrochemicals; real estate and industrial products, said the Hurun report. Moreover, massive growth in renewable energy generation, initiatives like Make In India, Production Linked Incentives (PLI) for manufacturing have been created in the last ten years.
Infrastructure addition has picked up at a quick pace, with railways, roadways and more — swelling order books of small companies. This helped small companies gain scale at a quicker pace, in addition to the digitisation-fuelled startup growth that the company has witnessed.
The 10x Growth Story
Instead of getting their hands dirty entirely, there is another way to take part in the Indian growth story, experts said.
For an HNI to become a UHNI requires a 10-30x growth in wealth, and these disproportionate outcomes can only come when people invest in emerging and fast-growing sectors and companies, typically unlisted companies, besides staying invested for a long period, explained Mitesh Shah, CEO of Equirus Family Office.
“Investment is another path, but we are not talking mutual funds as regular annual compounding will take a long time. We are talking about extraordinary conviction of investing which is risky, where people can lose as much too, but it creates the alpha,” said Junaid.
It’s not passive but active investing without sinking a large chunk of one’s capital in a single enterprise.“We have many instances where HNIs turned active investors in businesses with strategic stakes. Such investments are generally in areas where they possess knowledge to either help the founder run the business better or possess the network to help it grow exponentially. So, like an operator investor who works with founders in building the business,” added Shah.
One of his clients had exited his FMCG-like business and found himself with a stockpile, which he used to acquire a stake in a D2C business. He is helping them build distribution, scale and centralising challenges and is eyeing anywhere between Rs 100-300 crore in returns.
Many tech founders also practice this method — and bifurcate their investment interests across a portfolio of 5-10 companies. As much as 40-50% of personal investments are made into these emerging companies, with the hope of generating outsized returns while spreading risks, said experts.
There is another small but growing set of wealthy individuals — that of professional managers. “Say extremely hardworking professionals who have studied in top B-schools and colleges and work with companies at the top level, have also generated a decent amount of wealth, over a period of time,” added Junaid.
This, of course, traverses an entire career of a person, with the likes of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Jayshree Ullal, CEO of Arista Networks, making the cut.
Eyeing The IPO Millions
A shortcut method to achieve the above-mentioned alpha, especially with the ongoing bull run in the public markets, is via investing in initial public offers (IPOs) just before or well in advance. Apart from investors, chunky promoter exits have also generated a lot of wealth, taking many company promoters into the UHNI category.
“Offers for sale by such PE/VC investors at Rs 15,908 crore accounted for 10% of the total IPO amount (in FY25) while Offers For Sale by private promoters at Rs 75,077 crore accounted for 46% of the IPO amount,” said a report by Primedatabase on mainboard IPOs.
Follow-on public offers (FPOs) have also gained steam, generating wealth for promoters/investors. The last few years have seen exponential growth in IPO fundraising, amongst IPOs as well as SME IPOs, which have caught the fancy of HNIs, who invest as institutional buyers.
“HNIs are increasingly active in pre-IPO placements, anchor allocations in high-profile listings, and SME IPOs, which surged eight-fold since 2020, alongside tactical plays like mergers, demergers, and buybacks for event-driven alpha,” said R Ponmudi, founder and CEO of stock broking company Enrich Money.
The Path From Here
While wealth generation has been on overdrive for the last few years, it might have hit a wall this year. In the last year, Nifty50 has barely generated any returns. Moreover, over 60% of affluent Indians require upwards of Rs 50 crore to achieve the aspiration of financial independence, as per a survey by Mercedes-Benz Hurun India Luxury Consumer Survey 2025.
Where are the opportunities now, with funds drying up for startups and US tariffs threatening many small businesses? Experts believe there are still a few bright spots even in this economy.
“Digitisation, deep tech, renewable energy, defence hold some of these opportunities,” said Shah.
According to Ponmudi, HNI investors could follow the UHNI playbook even in their investment strategy, which could see steeper wealth generation. Most HNIs tend to favour themes that have generated wealth for them before like equities and real estate while UHNIs take more risk with interest in alternative investment funds (AIFs) and more such.
A growing number of wealthy Indians are investing abroad, too, but here, too, there is a difference in the style of investing.
“HNIs opt for feeder funds into Nasdaq 100 or S&P 500 ETFs eyeing 15–20% returns in AI/tech themes, while UHNIs allocate 8–10% to diversified plays in North America, European equities, bonds, and real estate, like Dubai luxury at Rs 12 crore average. UHNIs generally have 25% of their overall exposure abroad,” said Ponmudi.
All in all, HNIs either have to work hard or make their money work much harder to step up onto the ladder of being a UHNI.
