Top 10 Richest CA in the World

Kumar Mangalam Birla never spent a day auditing a client’s balance sheet. Yet he is usually the first name that comes up when people search for the richest CA in the world, with recent public estimates placing his fortune above $19 billion. That gap between what a CA qualification trains you to do and what some CAs go on to build is why this list keeps getting searched.

At IIC Lakshya, students ask some version of this every counselling season: does becoming a CA actually make you rich, or is that survivorship bias built around ten famous names? It is a fair question. Below are the ten wealthiest chartered accountants commonly included in these rankings, what they actually did with the qualification, and where real CA salaries land once the billionaires are taken out of the picture.

What This Richest Ranking Means?

A quick note on scope first. Chartered Accountant is a specific, regulated qualification, not a loose label for anyone who is good with numbers. In India, it means ICAI membership; in the UK and Ireland, recognised chartered-accountancy bodies include ICAEW, ICAS, and Chartered Accountants Ireland. This list sticks to people reported to hold one of these or a closely related chartered-accountancy credential, which is why almost every list of the top 10 richest chartered accountants in India overlaps heavily with a global one.

Net worth figures also move constantly, and different trackers can disagree by a billion dollars for the same person on the same day. Treat the numbers below as rounded estimates from mid-2026, not fixed facts.

Top 10 Richest CA in the World, Ranked by Net Worth

Rank	Name	Country	Best Known For	Est. Net Worth
1	Kumar Mangalam Birla	India	Aditya Birla Group	$19 billion+
2	Uday Kotak	India	Kotak Mahindra Bank	~$13 billion
3	Rakesh Jhunjhunwala*	India	Stock market investing	~$5.8 billion (2022)
4	Paul Coulson	Ireland	Ardagh Group	~$2.8 billion
5	Motilal Oswal	India	Motilal Oswal Financial Services	~$1.8 billion
6	Raamdeo Agrawal	India	Motilal Oswal Financial Services	~$1.7 billion
7	Radhe Shyam Agarwal	India	Emami Group	~$1.3 billion
8	Nirmal Jain	India	IIFL Group	$1 billion+
9	Rajesh Sharma	India	Capri Global Capital	Low hundreds of millions
10	Tony Fernandes	Malaysia	AirAsia / Capital A	~$300–650 million

*Jhunjhunwala passed away in 2022. His figure reflects his estimated net worth at that time, not a current valuation.

1. Kumar Mangalam Birla

Birla qualified as a CA, added an MBA from London Business School, and took over the Aditya Birla Group in 1995 at the age of 28, soon after his father’s sudden death. He grew a roughly $2 billion business into a conglomerate spanning cement, metals, telecom, and fashion across more than 40 countries. With his fortune estimated above $19 billion, he remains the usual answer to the question: who is the richest CA in the world?

2. Uday Kotak

Kotak paired a CA qualification with an MBA from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute and turned a small finance company established in 1985 into one of India’s largest private banks. He stepped back from day-to-day management in 2023 but remained the bank’s largest individual shareholder, with an estimated net worth of around $13 billion.

3. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

Jhunjhunwala qualified as a CA but never practised. Instead, he spent decades building his fortune by buying and holding Indian equities, eventually earning the nickname “India’s Warren Buffett.” At the time of his death in 2022, his portfolio was estimated at nearly $5.8 billion. He is perhaps the clearest example here of a CA who became wealthy without ever running a company.

4. Paul Coulson

Coulson qualified as a chartered accountant with Price Waterhouse in 1978, then spent two decades in leasing and structured finance before buying into the old Irish Glass Bottle Company in 1998. He rebuilt it into Ardagh Group, a packaging business generating roughly $7 billion in annual revenue. Coulson’s own wealth has been estimated at close to $2.8 billion, earning him the nickname 'the Cooler' for calmly negotiating his way out of a lawsuit that could have sunk the business.

5–6. Motilal Oswal and Raamdeo Agrawal

Both co-founders of Motilal Oswal Financial Services are chartered accountants, each worth close to $2 billion. Oswal was reportedly turned down by 60 accounting firms early in his career because he was not fluent in English. He and Agrawal later started out walking a mile to the nearest payphone to relay client orders. Their firm now operates across broking, wealth management, and asset management in India.

7. Radhe Shyam Agarwal

Agarwal is both a CA and a company secretary. He and a childhood friend started Emami in 1974 with about $2,600 borrowed from the friend’s father. They went on to build a conglomerate spanning FMCG, cement, and real estate, with Agarwal’s stake now estimated at $1.3 billion.

8. Nirmal Jain

A rank-holding CA and cost accountant, Jain traded commodities for six years before founding a research firm in 1995 that eventually grew into IIFL. He crossed the billion-dollar mark in 2018 and continues to hold close to a quarter of the group.

9. Rajesh Sharma

Sharma moved to Mumbai in 1989 to train as a CA and later built Capri Global into a lending business focused on affordable housing and small-business loans. Forbes has listed his family among its global billionaires through their holding, although Sharma’s individually reported net worth has been closer to a few hundred million. It is a reminder that “richest” still covers a wide range, even within one list.

10. Tony Fernandes

Fernandes is a Fellow of ACCA and a member of ICAEW, qualifications he earned before working in finance at Virgin and Warner Music. In 2001, he and his partners bought a failing government airline for one ringgit and turned it into AirAsia, now one of Asia’s largest budget carriers. His estimated net worth is the smallest on this list, usually falling in the hundreds of millions rather than billions.

What Separates These CAs From the Rest?

A few patterns are hard to miss once these ten are lined up. Almost none built their fortunes inside a CA firm; the qualification was a launchpad, not the destination.

Their starting points varied widely too. Birla inherited a sizeable business and scaled it, while Agarwal and Oswal started with almost nothing. What connects them is not raw talent alone. Each made one specific bet and stayed with it for decades, not months.

Are Chartered Accountants Rich? CA Salaries Today

None of this means a CA salary alone will take you anywhere near this list. ICAI’s campus placement data is a more honest yardstick for understanding the highest paid CA in India. Average starting packages for newly qualified CAs are commonly around ₹12–13 lakh a year. For the December 2025–January 2026 placement cycle, ICAI reported a highest domestic offer of ₹32.33 lakh a year, while international postings in some cycles have crossed ₹50 lakh.

Chartered Accountant highest salary figures climb steeply from there. A CA with eight to ten years of experience in corporate finance or Big 4 advisory may earn ₹25–50 lakh, depending on the role, location, and organisation. CFOs and partners at the upper end can cross ₹1 crore. For CA highest salary in world terms moves further out in markets such as the US, UK, and the Gulf.

These are strong earnings, but they are usually built one promotion at a time—not made overnight. You can explore the broader progression in this detailed CA salary breakdown.

There is a useful counterexample in Deepak Parekh, who led HDFC for four decades and helped build one of India’s largest financial institutions. Yet he held only a small personal stake in it and never came close to the entrepreneurs on this list. Being a legendary CA and being a billionaire CA are two different things. Most working chartered accountants will build careers closer to Parekh’s story than Birla’s.

Is CA the Right Career Choice for You?

If you are weighing CA Foundation after Class 12 against direct entry into CA Intermediate after graduation, here is the honest framing. None of the ten people above became rich simply because they were chartered accountants. They became wealthy because they built or ran something specific for more than twenty years, and their CA training gave them the judgement to do it well.

Treating ‘clear CA, get rich’ as a guaranteed promise is probably the most common mistake students make while choosing this path.

What CA reliably offers is a strong, respected career across audit, taxation, corporate finance, and independent practice, with a genuine opportunity to move into senior leadership later. If you want to understand how that path fits your background, an IIC Lakshya counselling session is a practical next step, and it costs nothing.

Final Word

So, who is the richest CA in the world right now? Kumar Mangalam Birla, by a wide margin, with Uday Kotak close behind.

The more useful takeaway is not a name, though—it is the pattern. Every person here stayed with one field or one long-term bet for decades, using an accounting foundation as a starting point rather than a ceiling. For other famous CAs in the world who built influence rather than personal fortunes, our detailed guide is worth reading too.