At just 21, Kylie Jenner is world's youngest billionaire
Los Angeles: Reality TV star and make-up mogul Kylie Jenner has become the world's youngest self-made billionaire, according to Forbes billionaires' list. The 21-year-old founded and owns Kylie Cosmetics, the three-year-old beauty business that generated an estimated $360m in sales last year, reports bbc.com.
She reached the milestone earlier than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who became a billionaire aged 23. "I didn't expect anything. I did not foresee the future. But (the recognition) feels really good. That's a nice pat on the back," Kylie told Forbes.
The list shows Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, remains the world's richest man. His fortune totals $131bn, according to Forbes, up $19bn from 2018. But the billionaires' combined worth is down from $9.1 trillion at $8.7tn.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's wealth is among those falling. It has dropped by $8.7 billion in the past year to $62.3 billion, according to the Forbes list. His shares in Facebook at one point lost a third of their value as the company battled privacy scandals.
Of all the billionaires on the list only 252 are women, and the richest self-made woman is real estate mogul Wu Yajun of China, worth an estimated $9.4 billion. The number of self-made women reached 72 for the first time, up from 56 a year ago.
Among Indians, Mukesh Ambani jumped six positions to rank 13th on the Forbes World's Billionaire list. Ambani, 61, saw wealth soar from $40.1 billion in 2018 when he was placed 19th richest in the world, to $50 billion to be rank at 13th in 2019.
"Ambani chairs and runs the $60 billion (revenue) oil and gas giant Reliance Industries, among India's most valuable companies," Forbes said. "In 2016, Reliance sparked a price war in India's hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio." Jio, it said, has signed on 280 million customers by offering free domestic voice calls, dirt-cheap data services and virtually free smartphones.
The list of Indian billionaires includes Piramal Entreprises Chair Ajay Piramal (436), Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (617),
Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy (962) and RCom chairman Reliance Anil Ambani (1349).
