It’s time for India to lead the world! Because, ten years from now, India will lead the world in terms of number of billionaires, says a poll by Forbes magazine. According to an Internet poll conducted by the magazine which lists the world’s richest billionaires every year, more than half of the respondents believe that India will have the maximum number of billionaires by 2017.

The latest Forbes list of world’s billionaires published last month, includes business stalwarts like Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, and KP Singh from India, putting India in the fourth place in the world in terms of the billionaires population. While the U.S. continues to top the ranking with the highest number of billionaires in the list, according to the online poll on Forbes’ website in which over 11,800 votes were cast at the last count, only 17 per cent of respondents believe that the U.S. would have the most billionaires in 2017. In comparison, the majority 53 percent believes that India would be at the top ten years from now.

The second highest number of votes has gone in favor of China, with 20 percent, while the U.S. comes at the third position, according to the poll data. Interestingly, none of the other countries has so far managed to garner a vote of more than 10 percent. Russia comes at the fourth position with three percent, while Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom have polled one percent each. So far, virtually no vote has been cast in favor of France.

According to the magazine, the Americans now account for 42 percent of the total of 1,125 billionaires in the world, down from the 44 percent it had last year. Half of the world’s 20 richest people were from the U.S. just two years ago, and their dominance seems to be diminishing. Forbes pinned down 946 billionaires, including 178 newcomers and 17 people who climbed back into the ranks after being absent for a year or more, in its latest list.

In this year's list of billionaires, there were 226 newcomers, which included 77 from the US. Besides, there were 35 newcomers from Russia, 28 from China and 19 from India.
This represents an annual growth of more than 50 per cent in the number of Indian billionaires from India. Going by this growth rate, the number could increase by 53 currently to close to 3,000 in 10 years from now, says the magazine.