Methodology

In order of preference, every profile's net worth is sourced from:

1. A direct, named point estimate (a rich-list entry, a company's own disclosure).
2. For a listed company's founder or promoter: disclosed shareholding percentage × current share price, calculated explicitly rather than left as "undisclosed."
3. For Indian elected officials specifically: the ECI/ADR public asset-disclosure affidavit (myneta.info) — a legal requirement for every candidate, and real structured public-record data.
4. A rough range from a rich-list bracket (shown as "Estimated $X – $Y," or "$X+" when only a lower bound is known — never silently dropped).
5. If none of the above is findable anywhere: an honest "Undisclosed" state. A figure is never invented for a real named person — that's a legal risk, not just a UX one.

Every profile needs at least 2 independent sources — citations from genuinely different publishers, not two links to the same article — before it publishes automatically. This is enforced in code, not a style guideline: a profile that can't clear that bar is held for human review instead of going live on a single source.

Every profile is placed into one of eight tiers, built from six independently-assessed and then blended dimensions (Net Worth, Reach, Power, Influence, Network, Legacy) — so one inflated dimension can't pull a profile up on its own. Within a tier, a Low/Mid/High/Top sub-band shows where a profile sits relative to real peers at that same tier, computed as a quartile split against their actual scores — never a subjective adjustment.

Apocalypse and Shadow Index are the two exceptions: they are editorial judgments, not score-derived, reserved for the handful of entities whose power is systemic or deliberately hidden from public view.

Two things always route a profile to a human before it goes live, regardless of how it was researched: not clearing the 2-independent-source minimum above, or landing at Continental tier or higher. A Continental-tier claim carries far more real-world weight than a City-tier one, so it doesn't get to auto-publish just because two citations exist. Until a human clears it, the profile is visibly marked pending review and excluded from search.

Every profile shows its own "Last Updated" date and source count. When a report leads to an actual correction, that correction is logged and shown on the profile itself — not silently edited away. See a profile's "Report incorrect information" link to flag something, or the correction history on any profile that's had one.

This is not a substitute for Forbes or Bloomberg's own reporting, which draws on licensed financial data feeds and named journalists accountable for individual stories. Every figure and tier here is an editorial assessment built from public sources and an AI research pipeline with the review gates above — comparable in nature to a Forbes-style ranking, not a claim of audited financial fact. See Terms for the full disclaimer.