Bollywood actor Salman Khan has emerged the richest Indian celebrity, according to the 2018 Forbes India Celebrity 100 list. This is the third consecutive year Salman is topping the list.
According to estimates, Salman earned Rs 253.25 in the period between October 1, 2017, to September 30, 2018. He earned the top spot due to the commercial success of his films Tiger Zinda Hai and Race 3.
Shah Rukh Khan has dropped from the top 10 list as he had no movie releases in 2017.
Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli is at the second spot with total earnings of Rs 228.09 crore, followed by Akshay Kumar with Rs 185 crore in earnings in the period under consideration for the list.
The first woman celebrity to find a spot in the top 10 is newly wed actress Deepika Padukone. She is estimated to have earned Rs 112.8 crore, placing her firmly at rank 4.
Others on the list include cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Rs 101.77 crore), Aamir Khan (Rs 97.50 crore), Amitabh Bachchan (Rs 96.17 crore), Ranveer Singh (Rs 84.7 crore), Sachin Tendulkar (Rs 80.00 crore) and Ajay Devgn (Rs 74.50 crore).
Interestingly, there is good representation from the prolific South Indian film industry this year. There are 17 celebrities from the South this year against 13 on the 2017 list.
Brian Carvalho, the editor, Forbes India, said: "The Celebrity 100 is a definitive barometer of earnings of celebrities. Besides the earnings charts and cover stories on high-fliers like Sachin Tendulkar, Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone, we have also covered in the Celebrity 100 Special issue a whole new generation of celebrities - the unlikeliest of YouTube stars from the hinterland, a rapper from the Mumbai ghettos and an activist actor from Kerala taking on misogyny head-on in the testosterone-driven Malayalam film industry."
