A recent study on world’s billionaires noted that University of Mumbai is the alma mater of 12 billionaires. Mumbai University has been ranked at the ninth spot in the list of top billionaire-producing institutes in the world, according to a study by Singapore-based wealth research consultancy Wealth-X and Swiss bank UBS.
This makes Mumbai University only the second institute from outside the US to find a place among the top 10 in terms of billionaire alma maters. London School of Economics (UK), ranked 10th, is the other institute outside the US to find a spot in this list. University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and Yale University occupy the first three positions in this list, being alma maters of 25, 22 and 20 billionaires respectively.
India’s richest person Mukesh Ambani is an alumni of University of Mumbai. The chairman of Reliance Industries earned his chemical engineering degree from Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai (earlier University Department of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai). He later pursued MBA from Stanford University, USA.
The report noted that pursuing higher education is not a prerequisite for attaining billionaire status: 35 per cent of the world’s billionaires do not have a bachelor’s degree and some even dropped out of high school.
Overall, India has retained its sixth position in terms of number of billionaires, with 100 such people collectively having $175 billion in networth. The report noted that the global billionaire population rose to 2,325 this year, a 7 per cent rise from 2013.
