Fortune magazine has named Kumar Mangalam Birla, the 35-year-old chairman of the diversified Aditya Birla Group, as the richest Asian under the age of forty.
However, Birla has slipped two notches to the tenth spot in Fortune's latest list of the 40 richest people under 40 outside the United States.
Eleven Asians feature in Fortune's list of wealthiest people below 40 years of age outside the United States.
Last year, Fortune had ranked him 8th with a personal wealth of $2.1 billion. He has been ranked 10th this year with a sizeably diminished wealth of $1.3 billion.
Two other Indian names featuring in last year's list are not there this time round. Sabeer Bhatia, who sold mailing service Hotmail to Microsoft a few years ago, was ranked 23rd last year with a personal wealth of $400 million.
Also in the list was Reuben Singh, a British citizen of Indian origin, who made a fortune of $151 million at the age of 25.
In fact, he was the youngest entry in last year's list. Singh's RS Group, of which he is the chairman, has interests in currency trading and wireless Internet services. Both the names are not there in the list this year.
This leaves Birla as the only Indian on the list. China, too, has seen a fall in its presence in the list -- while it had eight entries last year, it has only six this time round.
Russians dominate the top ten rankings, with billionaire oil tycoon Roman Abramovich leading the pack with a personal wealth of $8.3 billion.
Apart from him, there are four others in the top ten. Last year, too, the list was headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oil baron, with $7.2 billion against his name. But his name does not feature in the top ten this time.
Richard Li, the chairman of the Hong Kong-based Pacific Century Group and the son of Lee Ka-Shin (Hong Kong's richest man), who was 10th in last year's list with a kitty of $1.6 billion, has fallen off the top ten rankings.
Abramovich is followed by Swiss Ernesto Bertarelli of Serono ($5.6 billion), German Stefan Quandt of BMW ($5.1 billion), Russian Mikhail Fridman of Alfa Group ($2.4 billion), Venezuelan Lorenzo Mendoza of Empresas Polar ($2.2 billion), Russian Mikhail Prokhorov of Norilsk Nickel ($2.1 billion), Russian Oleg Deripaska of Base Element ($1.8 billion), Russian Eugene Shvidler of Sibneft ($1.6 billion), Mexican Emilio A Jean of Grupo Televisa, the world's largest Spanish-language media group ($1.6 billion), and India's Birla ($1.3 billion).
