The stock market rally has changed the sweepstakes at the country’s richie-rich club, with real estate tycoon K P Singh of DLF overtaking Anil Ambani to become the second richest Indian after Mukesh Ambani.

While the stock market continued its upward march on Thursday with a modest gain of 25 points today, a relatively stronger rally in real estate sector, the day’s best performer, helped Singh become India’s second richest person in terms of the value of promoter group shares on the bourses.

Bharti Group’s Sunil Mittal retained his fourth position, followed by Wipro’s Azim Premji at the fifth slot.

The collective wealth of the top five richest stood at about Rs 5,43,500 crore (136 billion dollars). This is nearly 11 per cent of the total investor wealth in the country. The cumulative market cap of all the companies listed at the BSE today soared to Rs 49,56,946 crore.

This represents a significant increase over about Rs 5,10,000 crore on July 26, the day after which market had gone on a downward path triggered by the subprime crisis in the US.

Earlier in March this year, US-based business magazine Forbes had ranked Mukesh Ambani as richest in India with a net worth of 20.1 billion dollars, Anil at second with 18.2 billion dollars, Premji at third with 17.1 billion dollars, Singh at fourth with 10 billion dollars and Mittal at fifth with 9.5 billion dollars of wealth.

Since then, the collective wealth of these five persons has grown by over 80 per cent from a total of about Rs 75 billion dollars as per the Forbes list.