Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra among India's 10 most Googled businesspeople

NEW DELHI: Tata Sons' chairman emeritus Ratan Tata has emerged as India's most searched business tycoon on Google in 2019. Google has released a 'Year in Search 2019' report which shows who or what was trending on the world's largest search engine during the year in India. While the most searched personality was Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter pilot Abhinanadan Varthaman, who was held captive by Pakistan for 60 hours after an aerial dogfight in June, the list of most searched business personalities was led by the 81-year-old Tata patriarch.

Here is the top 10 list of trending searches for business personalities in India.

1) Ratan Tata: The Tata Group patriarch was Google's most searched Indian business personality in 2019. Even after retirement in 2012, Ratan Tata continues to be active as the chairman of Tata Trusts and Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons.

Ratan Tata, who helmed the Tata Group for 21 years, is credited with transforming the group from a conventional corporate house into a $100 billion global conglomerate with high-profile acquisitions abroad. The industrialist, who joined Instagram earlier this year, has been awarded with two of India's highest civilian awards – Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.

2) Azim Premji: The 74-year-old czar of the Indian IT industry who turned Wipro from a cooking oil company into a $8.5 billion IT behemoth retired this July as the conglomerate's chairman and managing director.

The third richest Indian with a wealth of ₹1,17,100 crore according to the latest IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List, Premji has famously given away ₹50,000 crore to philanthropic activities.

3) Lakshmi Mittal: LN Mittal-led global steel giant ArcelorMittal has this month concluded a ₹42,000 crore acquisition of debt-laden Essar Steel. Based out of London now, Mittal made a fortune out of a series of acquisitions of loss-making companies all over the world. In 2017, Lakshmi Mittal was named in Forbes’ special list of the world’s '100 Greatest Living Business Minds'.

4) Cyrus S. Poonawalla: Although he has not been in the news, Pune-based 'vaccine king of India' Cyrus Poonawalla is not only one of the richest men in India but also one of the most popular on Google. The 77-year-old runs the Serum Institute of India, the world's biggest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold.

In one of the largest real estate deals in Mumbai, the billionaire had bought Lincoln House in the Breach Candy area of south Mumbai for a mind-boggling sum of ₹750 crore.

5) Anand Mahindra: One of the few industrialists to pour his heart out on Twitter almost on a daily basis, Mahindra & Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra will transition to the role of non-executive chairman from 1 April 2020.

6) Shiv Nadar: The 74-year-old's entrepreneurial journey began in 1976 in a garage to make calculators and microprocessors. His company HCL Technologies is now an $8.6 billion global IT company. He is also known for his philanthropic initiatives.

7) Gautam Adani: A college dropout, the billionaire is known as the ports tycoon of India. The 57-year-old runs Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, Adani Transmissions and Adani Gas.

8) Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Named among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon, Asia’s leading bio-pharmaceuticals enterprise.

9) Uday Kotak: The 60-year-old billionaire banker is the managing director and CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank.

10) Radhakishan Damani: The retail king of India runs Avenue Supermarts, that operates D-Mart retail stores. A college dropout, Damani had started his career as a stock broker.

Although Indian start-up entrepreneurs like Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal have been in the news regularly, yet none of them could make it to the top 10 list. Mukesh Ambani's name is also missing from the list. Ambani, whose net worth is estimated to be more than $60 billion in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is Asia's richest man.