The Celebrity sweepstakes of 2014

For a country like India, which is always searching for icons, celebrities have become embedded in everyday life. They are everywhere—in the movies, on TV, staring down from billboards and on social media. The influence which a movie star or a sporting icon has over the average Indian is growing with every passing year. And, in a sign of the changing times, many of these icons from the movies or sports are now engaging directly with their legions of admirers via Twitter and Facebook, giving people a peek into how they go about their daily lives or what they are thinking.

The Forbes India Celebrity 100 list , one of our key annual projects now in its third edition, attempts to capture the enormous clout—financial and otherwise—these celebrities command. Since a celebrity cannot be gauged merely by numbers, the List takes into account not just their entertainment-related earnings but also their fame rankings, which are drawn from their mentions across media platforms, including social media. Every year, moving slightly away from their domain of boardrooms and business leaders, Forbes India’s journalists start digging deep into how the celebrities fared in terms of the two key parameters of earnings and fame. They do this by speaking to several experts, gathering earnings estimates and tabulating media mentions. The numbers are then validated before the final 100, which you see in this issue, is drawn up.

The 2014 Forbes India Celebrity 100 list is special for a number of reasons. The most important one, perhaps, is that for the first time since we began drawing up the List, Shah Rukh Khan, who didn’t have a film release (barring a cameo) in the period under consideration, has been unseated from the top slot by friend and rival Salman Khan, who tops both in terms of revenues and fame. Controversy and court cases continue to dog Salman, but his clout grows with his box office hits and his charitable trust. (More on that on page 104.)

The other important aspect of the 2014 List is the continuing rise of 72-year-old icon Amitabh Bachchan, who moves up three places to number two this year, evidence that he is the country’s most enduring superstar. His Twitter following of nearly 12 million is the largest for anybody on that platform in India.

This year’s List has as many as 20 debutants and 10 returnees, indicating that celebrity power can shift pretty quickly—all in the space of a year, or even less. The Top 5 in this year’s List dominate the earnings sweepstakes, making up for as much as 35 percent of the total revenues of the Top 100. But it’s not great news for the ladies since, like last year, the Top 10 still has only one woman: Deepika Padukone, who replaces Katrina Kaif. There are various other trends that emerged during this intense exercise. Simply put, there’s enough reason for you to dig into this special issue.

Best,
Sourav Majumdar
Editor, Forbes India
Email:sourav.majumdar@network18publishing.com
Twitter id:@TheSouravM