Every one of us has always thought of becoming rich, but only some have the courage to dream and pursue that dream of becoming the richest person in the world, and we look up to these giants who have gathered their wealth through hard work and smart work and, we make them our idols. In this article, we bring you the list of the top 10 richest people in the world in 2021, and how they amassed such immense wealth. Read on and get inspired!
1 1. Elon Musk
Co-founder and CEO of Tesla Inc., this eccentric billionaire became the richest person in the world with a net worth of $188 billion (18800 crores) by the dawn of the new year 2021 surpassing the previous richest person, Jeff Bezos.
Elon Musk started his quest to become the richest person in the world from his early days at Stanford University, where he developed and launched his very first project Zip2, one of the earliest navigation services. He also created X.com which later became PayPal. From there on until today Musk has found immense success in his endeavors and is now, the proud CEO and lead designer for SpaceX, CEO and Co-founder of Tesla, and also CEO of The Boring Company.
A year ago, Musk wasn’t even in the top 20 richest people in the world but since March 2020, Tesla shares skyrocketed by a staggering 1,030% pushing its value to $816 (Rs. 59,567.51) per share and musk happens to own 241 million (2,410 lakh) of those shares, which put him to the top of richest people in the world list.
2 2. Jeff Bezos
Pic source; Getty Images
The second richest person in the world is none other than Jeff Bezos, Founder, and CEO of Amazon.com, with an estimated net worth of $183 billion. Bezos was the richest person in the world in 2019 and even in early 2020, but his divorce with his ex-wife Mackenzie Bezos cost him about 25% of Amazon’s shares, and the unexpected skyrocketing in the Tesla stock price put him in the 2nd place on the list of richest persons in the world.
Bezos founded Amazon.com in a garage in Seattle in 1994, which initially started as an online platform for selling books. From there on Amazon has grown to be one of the world’s largest retailers which sells everything you can think of.
Other prized possessions of Bezos include Blue Origin: the space exploration company, The Washington Post, and a 10,000-year clock known as the Long Now.
3 3. Bill Gates
Pic source; Getty Images
With a net worth of just $50 billion less than that of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates sits 3rd on our list of richest people in the world. This famous personality is the Co-Founder of Microsoft Corp and the Co-Founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along with these, he also has many other assets that add up making him the 3rd richest person in the world.
Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen worked together to develop new software for the original microcomputers while attending Harvard University. When their project took off, Gates dropped out of Harvard in his junior year and went on to found Microsoft alongside his friend Allen. He is also one of the most generous philanthropists and has given much of his wealth away for good causes.
4 4. Bernard Arnault
Pic source; Getty Images
With a net worth of a staggering $109 billion, French national, Bernard Arnault, the CEO and chairman of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company is 4th on the list of richest people in the world. His business empire spans 70 brands including Louis Vuitton, Sephora, Hennessey, and many more. The majority of his wealth however comes from his massive stake in Christian Dior SE.
Arnault worked for his father’s construction firm Ferret-Savinel after his engineering and later on took control of the company and converted it into a real estate company named Férinel Inc. Later on, he sold all his holding except Christian Dior and Le Bon Marché and went on to invest in LVMH in 1987 and became the majority shareholder and is now chairman of the board and CEO of the company.
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5 5. Mark Zuckerberg
Pic source; nytimes.com
This 36-year-old billionaire is worth $95.6 billion and is in 5th place on our list of richest people in the world. Facebook, the social media giant is the dream child of Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz, a bunch of Harvard students. As the business began to grow Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard and took hold of the business and is now the CEO and chairman of Facebook with 13% stakes in the company.
Mark has also invested in real estate and owns assets worth $225 million in real estate. Facebook is the parent company and is host to several companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg and his wife together founded the Chan Zuckerberg foundation in 2015 with the aim to use technology to fix societal ills, such as improving access and quality of education, improving house affordability, and many other things.
6 6. Warren Buffet
Pic source; Getty Images
The legend value investor, “The oracle of Omaha”, Warren Buffet is the most famous richest person on the face of the earth. Aged 90, he is also the oldest rich person on our list. Mr. Buffett bought his first shares in a small textile company called Berkshire Hathaway in 1962 and became the major shareholder by 1965. He directed the company towards insurance and other investments and now, Berkshire Hathaway is a $2.5 billion company, with a single share price of $350,000 in early 2021.
Mr. Buffett made his wealth by value investing and by picking out the companies with easy-to-understand operations. He has also acquired a lengthy list of companies over the years. He is also a well-known philanthropist with huge donations of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and his children’s charities.
Also Read: Top 10 books you must read as a stock market beginner.
7. 7. Zhong Shanshan
Pic credit; Nongfu Spring
The most versatile billionaire on our list, Zhong Shanshan is worth $84.7 billion. Zhong began his career as a construction worker and with a strange change in career, he went on to become a reporter during the 1980s. Quitting his job as a reporter he became a beverage sales agent. Wanting to do something for himself, he started bottled water distributing business in Hainan.
He founded his first business, health products company Yangshengtang, in 1993 and 3 years later he founded Nongfu Spring, a bottled water manufacturer that has now expanded to manufacturing other beverage products, and food products. Nongfu Spring had become the largest bottled water company in 2012, and it is still in the top 3 in the Chinese market now. Zhong stepped down from the board of Wantai, an infectious disease diagnostic company in Jan 2021, in which he had huge stakes, citing personal reasons.
8 8. Larry Page
Pic source; Indiatvnews.com
Co-founder of Google, Larry Page aged 47, is 8th on our list of the world’s richest people with a net worth of $81.7 billion. Page and his friend Sergey Brin came up with the idea of a search engine that would utilize backlinks while attending Stanford University in 1995. They named their project “BackRub”, which later became Google, with Page serving as the CEO of the company until 2001.
Google has got YouTube, and Android under its umbrella, and today Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet, a holding company for which Page was CEO from 2015 to 2019. He is also a founding investor of Planetary Resources, a space exploration, and asteroid mining company.
9 9. Sergey Brin
Pic source; Businessinsider.in
The other co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin is the 9th richest person in 2021 with a net worth of $79.1 billion. He and Larry Page founded Google and served as co-founders for this search engine giant. The unique aspect of Google is that both its co-founders share almost equal amount of wealth of the company. Brin was the co-president of google until 2001 and became Alphabet’s president until 2019 when Sundar Pichai took over as CEO.
Brin has a 5% ownership stake in Alphabet ($66.5 billion). He spends most of his time in the R&D sector responsible for Google’s self-driving cars and Google smart glasses. Being a man of good heart, he has given away millions of dollars towards researching a cure for Parkinson’s disease.
1 10. Larry Ellison
Pic source; Triplepundit.com
Larry Ellison acts as the co-founder, CTO, and Chairman of Oracle, a company that is worshipped among the software industry and is the provider of some of the most famous platforms such as Java, Linux, and Oracle Exadata. With a net worth of $79.1 billion, Larry Ellison is the 10th richest person in the world, in 2021.
Larry Ellison worked as a programmer in several companies, in California after dropping out from the University of Chicago. He met his future partners Ed Oates and Bob Miner at an electronics company called Ampex. Larry Ellison founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977, which released Oracle, the first software to utilize Structured Query Language, in 1979. Oracle became so popular that the name of the company was changed from SDL to Oracle Systems Corporation. Larry has a 35.4% ownership stake at Oracle. He also joined Tesla’s board of directors in Dec 2018, and he has equity of $12.5 billion in public assets.
Ellison likes to spend, especially in real estate. He bought nearly an entire Hawaiian island of Lanai for $300 million. Also, a man of good heart, he has been donating huge sums of money to medical research.
Want to see your name on this list?
Looking at all these wealthy people in the above list, one can get many ideas which can lead to one becoming the richest person in the world. Either become a technological innovator and invent something new or become the biggest retailer in the world, or you can look up to stock marketing and learn its basics and start value investing. However, if you already have ancestral wealth with you then just focus on growing it!
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