The Billionaires Club of India almost doubled from last year to 54 members up from 27, aided by a rebounding stock market that gained two-thirds in the year 2008 and an economy growing at six percent. According to Forbes Asia magazine, the country’s 100 richest people have a combined net worth of USD 276 billion, which was almost a quarter of the country’s GDP.

In 2008, there were only 27 billionaires on the India Rich List. In 2009, the number has almost doubled to 52-two short of what India had at the peak of the stock market boom in 2007. The richest newcomers are two brothers from Torrent Power - Sudhir and Samir Mehta, ranked 23 at USD 2.02 billion.

So we shall see that in 2015, India will be slowly climbing the ladder and become closer to China. By 2020, India will be there where China is now.  My prediction is India shall be the next “China” and finally together with existing Asia’s giant Japan and Korea, we will see that Asia, in 10 years time from today 2010, is the next economy Super Power. India and China will dominate the economy and it is time to have a collaboration with India if you are thinking to tap the Big market in mid and in south Asia.

The advent of scale change in India will create turmoil in global markets. If India’s oil demand more than doubles over the next 10 years, and China’s does the same, oil producers will have to deliver an extra 9 million barrels of oil per day to feed the extra demand from just these two countries. Since the total increase in world oil production in the last three decades was barely 9 mbd, don’t be surprised if oil prices catch fire at some point in the next few years.

It’s going to be a disruptive decade ahead for other markets too: in metals, energy and even agro-commodities, as Indian demand starts looking more like what Chinese demand has been in the recent past. If this explains why China has been busy in a one-country race to grab the world’s resources, wherever they may be, perhaps it is time India took the natural resource game a little more seriously.

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