The world's richest families

The Walton family is arguably the richest family in the world, the dispersed fortune of the Rockefellers and other being unknown to the public. And Ambani family's combined wealth makes it the second richest in the world. 

Yes, we've used figures from the Forbes list that appeared in August. Since then, Mukesh and Anil Ambani's wealth has grown exponentially, thanks to the boom in the Indian stock market.

European and US markets haven't really moved much over this period. So there hasn't been much change in the wealth of the other families mentioned on the list. As a result, the Ambani Brothers, with a combined wealth of $78.6 billion (Rs 3,14,400 crore), find themselves richer than Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico ($59 billion), Bill Gates ($59 billion) and Warren Buffett ($52 billion).

Incidentally, we haven't included these three on our list as all of them are individual billionaires and their wealth shows no change if their entire families are considered together.

However, as per the latest figure available, the Indian stock market boom has made the Ambani brothers arguably the richest in the world, which, at USD 91.41 billion, is far ahead of even the Walton family of Wal-Mart.

Sons of legendary industrialist Dhirbuhai Ambani, who started his career as a petrol station attendant in Yemen and later founded Reliance Industries, Mukesh and Anil split the business empire between them in June 2005.