Ramesh Kunhikannan Makes It To Forbes List Of Billionaires After Supplying Parts To Chandraayan-3

India reached a huge milestone last year, as the country became the first nation to land a spacecraft near the unexplored south pole of the moon. Ramesh Kunhikannan, whose company contributed largely to the historic space mission was named on the Forbes Billionaires List 2024 for the first time this year, thanks to the historic space mission. He is presently placed among the richest people across the globe along with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mukesh Ambani with a whopping $1.2 billion (approx Rs 10,011 crore) net worth.

Ramesh Kunhikanna is the founder and managing director of Kaynes Technology India, headquartered in Mysore. The company is famous for manufacturing electronic products. The 60-year-old billionaire graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore. He started his company in 1988 as a contract electronics manufacturer. His spouse and current company chairperson, Savitha Ramesh joined the company in 1996. The company presently hold a market capitalisation of Rs ₹17,156 Cr with its stocks priced at around Rs 2700, according to Value Search.

The 36-year-old company mainly supplies electronic systems and design services to automobile industries, aerospace, medical and defence. Kaynes’s services are mainly used for electronic controls in EVs, railway signals, etc. It is also one of the multiple companies which largely contributed to the achievement of Chandrayan 3. The company provided power systems for the Chandrayaan-3’s lander and rover. Following the successful completion of the mission, Kaynes Technology India’s shares skyrocketed from Rs 1719 in August 2022 to Rs 2683.85 as of today. Presently, Kunhikannan holds 64 per cent of the company which is around $1.1 billion (approximately Rs 8.3 thousand crores) to his net worth.

For the first time, 200 Indians were placed on Forbes’s list of World’s Billionaires for 2024 on Wednesday, according to a report by First Post. Mukesh Ambani topped the list among Indians, becoming India’s richest person with a net worth of $116 billion (approximately Rs 966 thousand crores) followed by Gautam Adani with a net worth of $84 billion (approximately Rs 700 thousand crores).