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Do you know what the Indian Billionaire List teaches us?

Last week, Forbes magazine announced their annual Billionaires List. This year 52 Indian billionaires made the cut. So what can we learn from them towards our own path of wealth creation?

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1. Don't believe a thing about overnight wealth creation
   

   Look through the list and you will see that almost everyone has painstakingly built their fortune over many years. There are no overnight successes. For instance, it has taken the Ambani brothers about 4 decades to get to where they are. The promoters of DLF have been building a real estate empire for about half a century.

   Inexperienced investors get trapped in the get rich quick mentality, without realizing that real wealth takes time to build. The lesson for us is that sustainable wealth creation only happens over time. There are no short cuts.

2. Get a basic roof over your head before you start dreaming of a palace
   

   Almost everyone on the list built a strong foundation first, which meant taking care of basic needs for the family and providing for stability before they can take entrepreneurial risk to build something great.

   Fortunes can only be built if one has the foundation right. This means that before you shoot for the moon, focus on getting basic needs financial fulfilled. Make sure you have are living within your means, not taking on a lot of debt, have provided for the family's housing, protection and healthcare needs, before you start spending the family's cash on building a business. If you don't have a cheap home loan, adequate life insurance or health coverage, get it now before you expose your family to any risk.

3. Your salary is not enough - you have to take the entrepreneurial plunge
   

   No one on the list is an employee at a company. Everyone is an entrepreneur or someone who is running a business they built or inherited from their family.

   Many of us are employed at safe and well paying jobs at large Indian companies or MNCs. But, if you have the ambition to be rich and create wealth, you will have to step out of your comfort zone and build a business. There is no other way. Successful entrepreneurship is an insurance against retirement.

4. Its not impossible to become a billionaire
   

   The list has 52 Indian billionaires - each one is proof that it is possible to create wealth beyond one's imagination within one generation itself. For instance, Bharti has been built by the Mittal family in one generation into a multi-billion family empire with Airtel as the flagship business. Similarly, the founding team of Infosys were employees at Patni Systems, before they took entrepreneurial risk to build a huge IT services company in one generation.

   The lesson is that one needs to have a game plan and a roadmap for how to get there. And thereafter, one needs to have laser like focus towards achieving one's goal.

Comments

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Mohd Jahangir said : 24/11/2009	Useful article for budding enterprenaurs, there is no shortcuts to building an empire. It takes lots of courage, vision, focus to be among the highly successful business man.
aamadmi said : 24/11/2009	Good one minute Wrap Up !