India is ranked third after the United States and China when it comes to the number of billionaires, according to the Forbes report of richest individuals.

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The list shows India with 121 billionaires, 19 more than last year, with Mukesh Ambani topping the list with assets of $40.1 billion.

He moved up to the 19th global rank on the list of 2,208 billionaires worldwide compiled by Forbes. In 2017, he ranked 33rd with $23.2 billion.

The US has 585 billionaires and China 373 this year on the Forbes tally, which it calls "The Three Comma Club" for the punctuation used in writing out fully the billion in numbers.

In 2017, there were 102 Indians on the list.

Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, 39, is the youngest Indian billionaire, while 92-year-old Samprada Singh, chairman emeritus of Alkem Laboratories, is the oldest, according to Forbes.

Sharma, ranked 1,394th on the list with a fortune of USD 1.7 billion, is the only Indian billionaire in the under-40 league.

Sharma founded fast-rising mobile wallet Paytm in 2011. He has also created Paytm Mall, an e-commerce business business and Paytm Payments Bank.

"One of the biggest beneficiaries of India's demonetisation, Paytm has notched up 250 million registered users and 7 million transactions daily. Sharma owns 16 per cent of Paytm, which is now valued at USD 9.4 billion," Forbes said.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the world's richest man with assets valued at $112 billion, overtaking Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates whose fortunes are valued at $90 billion and investor Warren Buffet with $84 billion.

In 2017, Gates ranked first globally with $86 billion, Buffet second with $75.6 billion and Bezos third with $72.8 billion.

Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post newspaper, is the first person to cross the $100 billion mark in assets, Forbes said. His fortunes rose by $39.2 billion over the past year, which Forbes said is the list's biggest one-year jump ever.

Gates, who heads the world's biggest philanthropic organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated a lot of his assets to charities.

Here is the list

1 Mukesh Ambani2 Azim Premji 3 Hinduja Family4 Lakshmi Mittal5 Pallonji Mistry6 Godrej Family7 Shiv Nadar8 Kumarmanglam Birla9 Dilip Shanghvi10 Gautam Adani11 Uday Kotak 12 Radhakishan Damani13 Cyrus Poonawalla14 Sunil Mittal15 Bajaj Family 16 Savitri Jindal17 Vikram Lal18 Benu Gopal Bangur19 Acharya Balkrishna20 Burman Family21 Subhash Chandra22 Pankaj Patel23 Vivek Chand Sehgal24 Kushal Pal Singh25 Nusli Wadia26 Ajay Piramal27 MA Yusuff Ali28 Madhukar Parekh29 Kalanithi Maran30 Pawan Munjal31 Kapil and Rahul Bhatia32 Micky Jagtiani32 Harsh Mariwala34 BR Shetty35 Ravi Pillai36 Mangal Prabhat Lodha37 Kuldip Singh & Gurbachan Singh Dhingra38 Karsanbhai Patel39 Ashwin Dani40 Gupta Family41 Shashi and Ravi Ruia42 Sudhir and Samir Mehta43 Samprada Singh44 Anil Agarwal45 Anil Ambani46 P.V. Ramprasad Reddy47 Baba Kalyani48 Vinod & Anil Rai Gupta49 Sameer Gehlaut50 Hasmukh Chudgar51 Jain family52 Ashwin Choksi53 Rajan Raheja54 Rakesh Jhunjhunwala55 Kishore Biyani56 Abhay Vakil57 Chandru Raheja58 MG George Muthoot59 Abhay Firodia60 Yusuf Hamied61 Rajesh Mehta62 Vijay Chauhan63 Amalgamations family64 Jai Hari & Yadu Hari Dalmia65 Sunny Varkey66 Murugappa Family67 Rajendra Agarwal68 Harsh Goenka69 Sunil Vaswani70 Jitendra Virwani71 Leena Tewari72 Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw73 Sanjiv Goenka74 Lachman Das Mittal75 Murli Dhar & Bimal Kumar Gyanchandani76 Mofatraj Munot77 Murali Divi78 Ramesh Juneja79 Anurag Jain80 Ranjan Pai81 Vikas Oberoi82 Ravi Jaipuria83 Salil Singhal84 N Narayana Murthy85 Nirav Modi86 Rajju Shroff87 Sunder Genomal88 Dinesh Nandwana89 Nandan Nilekani90 Radhe Shyam Agarwal90 Radhe Shyam Goenka92 Senapathy Gopalakrishnan93 Satish Mehta94 Shamsheer Vayalil95 Shyam and Hari Bhartia96 Anand Mahindra97 Reddy Family98 Arvind Poddar99 Vijay Shekhar Sharma100 Rana Kapoor