The largest continent by size and population, Asia has also grown into a financial powerhouse. It's home to the world's second-, third-, and ninth-largest economies in China, Japan, and India, respectively. The continent is also the playground for 10 of the planet's 50 wealthiest people, who are worth a combined $205 billion.
With a fortune of $29.2 billion, real estate mogul Wang Jianlin is the richest person in Asia, followed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma at $26.5 billion. India's wealthiest man, industrial magnate Mukesh Ambani, rounds out the top three with a net worth of $24.8 billion.
This comes from new data provided to Business Insider by Wealth-X, a company that conducts research on the super-wealthy, featured in our recent ranking of the world's richest people. Wealth-X maintains a database of dossiers on more than 110,000 ultra-high-net-worth people, using a proprietary valuation model to discern the size of their fortunes.
Read on to learn more about the richest people on the world's largest continent, who range from tech tycoons to real estate giants.
10. Lei Jun
Net worth: $14.4 billion
Age: 45
Country: China
Industry: Tech
Source of wealth: Self-made; Xiaomi
Like several of his fellow 21st-century Chinese billionaires, Lei Jun earned his $14.4 billion fortune in tech. His smartphone maker, Xiaomi, became the fourth-largest smartphone vendorin the world, and the largest in China, within about three years of its founding.
Lei got his start in tech shortly after college when he joined Kingsoft, a Chinese software company similar to Microsoft, as an engineer. During his tenure at Kingsoft, Lei served as chief technology officer, president, and CEO, succeeding in taking the company public in 2007 before resigning. In 2010, after spending a few years as a venture capitalist, the already-wealthy Chinese entrepreneur founded Xiaomi with a former Google China executive. Lei was appointed chairman of Kingsoft in 2011 and forged a partnership between the two companies to provide cloud-storage capabilities for his phones.
Xiaomi, often referred to as "the Apple of China," is now the second most valuable private-tech company in the world, with a $46 billion valuation. But as sales growth has slowed, experts are contemplating the sustainability of Xiaomi's business model in overseas markets.
9. Dilip Shanghvi
Net worth: $16.4 billion
Age: 60
Country: India
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
Source of wealth: Self-made; Sun Pharmaceutical Industries
After graduating from the University of Calcutta in 1982, Dilip Shanghvi started working at his father's wholesale generic-drugs business, where he saw an opportunity to manufacture Lithosun, a drug that treated manic-depressive disorders and was unavailable in much of eastern India. That was the genesis of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, which Shangvi founded in 1983 with a $1,000 investment from his father.
In its first year of business, Sun Pharma generated more than $100,000 in sales, and in 1994 the company went public on the Bombay Stock Exchange. It began expanding shortly thereafter, entering the global generic-drug market by acquiring Michigan-based Caraco Pharmaceuticals Laboratories in 1997, the first of many international acquisitions. In 2012, Shanghvi stepped down as chairman and now serves as managing director of the company, which generates $4.5 billion in sales.
Early in 2015, Shanghvi became the richest man in India for a period of time after his company's stocks surged. No matter the number, Shanghvi remains devoted to philanthropy as founder and chairman of the Shantilal Shanghvi Foundation, which donates to education, social-welfare, and community-development causes.
8. Azim Premji
Net worth: $16.5 billion
Age: 70
Country: India
Industry: Technology
Source of wealth: Inheritance/self-made; Wipro
In 1966, 21-year-old Azim Premji dropped out of Stanford in the wake of his father's death to take the helm of his father's company Western India Vegetable Products — later renamed Wipro. It was under Premji's leadership that the company diversified into toiletries and bath products and, eventually, IT, and the company grew exponentially. Now India's third-largest IT giant, Wipro generated revenues of $7.6 billion in its most recent fiscal year.
Just days into the new year, Premji named Abidali Neemuchwala, a Dallas-based consultancy executive, the new CEO of Wipro, citing him as the best leader to take Wipro into "its next phase of growth." Neemuchwala had been brought on to Wipro as chief operating officer last April after years of working for rival Tata Consultancy Services.
Premji is known for his generosity. He signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate at least half of his wealth to charity, and in 2015 was named "the most generous Indian" on the Hurun India Philanthropy list for the third year in a row.
7. Ma Huateng
Net worth: $17.1 billion
Age: 44
Country: China
Industry: Technology
Source of wealth: Self-made; Tencent Holdings
Softward engineer Ma Huateng founded China's largest internet portal, Tencent Holdings, in 1998. He was 26. Ma's company has a number of successful and widely used platforms in its portfolio, including QQ, its instant-messaging service, which is one of the world's 10 largest websites; a mobile-texting service (WeChat) with 600 million users; a mobile-commerce product (WeChat Wallet); and an online-gaming community (Tencent Games), the largest in China.
Last year Ma made two big deals. In April, he bought a $400 million stake in Chinese classified-listings platform 58.com, of which Tencent already owned a 25% share. That same month he also bought a 15% stake in mobile-game maker Glu Mobile for $126 million.
6. Lee Shau Kee
Net worth: $18.5 billion
Age: 87
Country: Hong Kong
Industry: Real estate
Source of wealth: Self-made; Henderson Land Development
Lee Shau Kee fled China for Hong Kong before the Communist takeover in 1948, working in commodities like gold and currency exchange before founding Henderson Land Development in 1973. Over the last 43 years, Henderson has become a top real-estate developer in Hong Kong and China, generating annual sales of more than $3 billion and making Lee one of the richest men in Asia.
An active philanthropist, Lee has donated more than $100 million over the years to causes ranging from education to affordable housing to farmer-training programs. In October, he honored the birth of his seventh grandchild by giving away HK$15 million — about US$1.9 million — to his friends and employees.
5. Li Ka-shing
Net worth: $19.5 billion
Age: 87
Country: Hong Kong
Industry: Diversified investments
Source of wealth: Self-made; CK Hutchison Holdings
Despite humble beginnings, business magnate Li Ka-shing has become the wealthiest man in Hong Kong. After his father died of tuberculosis, Li dropped out of school at 16 to support his family, working in a factory making plastic flowers. Six years later, he opened his own factory, the predecessor to what's known today as CK Hutchison Holdings, a vast business empire with interests in real estate, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, and technology. A savvy investor, Li and his venture-capital fund Horizon Ventures have backed companies like Facebook, Skype, Spotify, and the egg-replacement food startup Hampton Creek.
Last year Li reorganized his business affairs under two new listed companies, one entity for property holdings and another for all other global assets. The move is most likely in preparation to hand over control of his sprawling fortune to his son, but the 87-year-old doesn't have any plans of slowing down just yet. In August, he opened the 12,000th location of AS Watson, CK Hutchison's health and beauty-products retailer, now the largest in the world.
4. Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud
Net worth: $22.5 billion
Age: 60
Country: Saudi Arabia
Industry: Diversified investments
Source of wealth: Inheritance/self-made; Kingdom Holding Company
Prince Alwaleed — grandson of Abdul Aziz al Saud, the first ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — built his fortune with savvy investments in a range of companies across the US and the Middle East. He founded Kingdom Holding Co. in 1980 and has since invested in everything from real estate to entertainment to education, with stakes in companies like Twitter, The Four Seasons, Time Warner, and Motorola.
Recently, Prince Alwaleed also made a play for ride-hailing service Lyft, reportedly grabbing a 2.3% stake by putting up $105 million of a nearly $250 million round of funding the company raised in December.
Prince Alwaleed has an enigmatic relationship with his money. In 2013, he sued Forbes for allegedly underestimating his wealth. But last summer he announced plans to donate his entire fortune to charity anyway.
3. Mukesh Ambani
Net worth: $24.8 billion
Age: 58
Country: India
Industry: Petrochemicals, oil, and gas
Source of wealth: Inheritance/self-made; Reliance Industries
Mukesh Ambani took over as chairman of Reliance Industries when his father, the company's founder, died in 2002. The enormous industrial conglomerate generates $62 billion in annual revenue from its interests in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retail, and, more recently, telecommunications.
Ambani is the richest person in India with a personal fortune of over $24 billion. He owns a 27-story Mumbai mansion that cost $1 billion to build.
And if Ambani's projections for India's economy prove correct, expect that net worth to soar. Four years ago, Ambani predicted that India would grow from a $1.4 trillion economy in 2011 to a $30 trillion economy by 2030 — a bullish estimate considering that India's GDP today stands at $2.2 trillion.
2. Jack Ma
Net worth: $26.5 billion
Age: 51
Country: China
Industry: Technology
Source of wealth: Self-made; Alibaba
The second-richest person in China, Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Mareportedly started China's first internet company in 1988: China Yellowpages. He lost control of that company to a state-owned telecom in 1996 and started Alibaba three years later with just $60,000. Fifteen years after its inception, the e-commerce company broke records with a $25 billion initial public offering — the world's largest ever.
Post-IPO, however, Alibaba's good fortune began to slip. The company's shares dropped 22% in 2015, most likely because of China's slowing economy and concerns over counterfeiters using the company's platform. Ma isn't worried, though. He acknowledges that the next year will be a trying time for the Chinese economy, but he remains confident in Alibaba's long-term success. The company is dominant in one of the world's biggest markets, and he says the West's concern over China's economic slowdown is an "overreaction."
Additionally, Ma plans to push Alibaba outside of China and significantly expand its ventures abroad. He got in US President Barack Obama's good graces after being interviewed about climate change and entrepreneurship by the president at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in November.
1. Wang Jianlin
Net worth: $29.2 billion
Age: 61
Country: China
Industry: Real estate
Source of wealth: Self-made; Dalian Wanda Group
Wang Jianlin is the richest man in Asia, the largest and most populous continent on earth. The real-estate mogul, who served in the Chinese military from 1970 to 1986 before going into business, has his hands in dozens of sectors and his name on hundreds of companies through his conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, including British yacht maker Sunseeker and US-based AMC Entertainment. Some of Wang's largest investments are overseas, including upscale real-estate development projects in Sydney and Madrid.
From 2014 to 2015, Wang saw his fortune more than double from $13.2 billion to $30 billionafter Wanda Commercial Properties and Wanda Cinema Line, China's largest property developer and Asia's largest movie-theater operator, completed initial public offerings. During that time he also purchased a 20% stake in the Spanish soccer club Atlético Madrid for $52 million and bought the World Triathlon Corp., parent company of the iconic Ironman triathlon, for $650 million.
Wang has said that his future investments lie in the culture industry, a sector he claims has no brand or profit ceilings. The Chinese businessman already purchased Legendary Entertainment this year, the producer of "Jurassic World" and "The Dark Knight," for $3.5 billion in cash. The acquisition gives him immeasurable power in Hollywood and is the first step in his plan to control the world's biggest film company by revenue.
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