A few unrelated pointers to better understand the dimensions of our world.
Please note that all numbers are rough estimates collected from different sources. Please refer to them for directional purposes only.
#1
Paying subscribers | By far the largest number of paying subscribers is owned by Apple. Apple ecosystem has over 1 billion paying subscribers. For a comparison, Netflix has over 300 million, Amazon prime 200 million+. If one were to compare other services, gmail has over 1.8 billion active users (mostly free), but Alphabet has around 150 million paid subscribers. The population of the world is 8.1 billion. To see the significance of Apple’s number or how rare it is, consider that closest that comes is telecom with China Mobile which has close to 1 billion customers, Reliance Jio India has around 480 million subscribers. (Though if one were to look at free users, Facebook has over 3 billion monthly active users).
#2
Air, Food, Water | The world population is close to 8.1 billion people. About 730 million + people face daily hunger. Over 2 billion people face moderate food insecurity and over 3 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet. Close to 2.1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean cooking fuel and suffer from indoor pollution. 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water; 3.4 billion people lack safely managed sanitation and 1.7 billion lack basic hygiene services at home. Air, food, water – perhaps the primary needs which one wonders whether 21st century can find sustainable solutions for humanity for? The world is one that way and unable to access food, water, clean air leads to a lopsided world which is not sustainable in the medium to long run.
#3
GDP of the world | The global GDP is ~$110 trillion. (Some estimates put it at a lower number). The largest economy is United States ($29 trillion, around a quarter of world GDP, 4.2% of world population) followed by China ($18.7 trillion, 17.6% of world GDP, 17% of world population). All other countries are much smaller in terms of size of economy. For instance, third largest economy is usually Germany ($4.6 trillion GDP with 1% of world population). India is $3.9 trillion (3.36% of world GDP with 17.8% of the world population residing there). The 10th largest is Brazil and 20th largest is Poland. Amongst the large economies, fastest growing is India. The world grows every year at 3-3.3%. Whether the growth is sustainable depends on several factors, but to the question whether growth is needed, the philosophical answer is yes. Anything alive, grows, adapts.
#4
Largest Sectors & Largest Employers | If one were to consider the largest sectors of the world, retail and wholesale or trading where all value-add meets fruition is the largest. Close to $30 trillion. This also signifies the trade in the world. Against this, the manufacturing sector is ~$15 trillion. Financial Services is the second largest with close to $26.5 trillion. Agriculture is small at $4 trillion total. But it is still the single largest employer for humanity, employing close to 900 million people. All industry, manufacturing, mining, construction etc employs ~750 million people. Amongst services, Trade & Retail is the largest employer where ~600 million global workers are engaged. Health & Education employs ~9% of the working population globally. (Global labour participation is 61% of the world population).
#5
Rural-Urban Population | In many ways these times are unprecdented. Until 2007, more than half of the world resided in rural areas. It tilted in 2008, and now 56.2% of the world lives in urban areas. The fact is to be seen from the perspectiove that until year 1800, only 3% of the world was urbanised, and by 1900, only 16%. Most of Africa and South Asia are still rural countries. Most of Americas and Europe, and increasingly China, are urban. Of the city population, it is estimated that one in four lives in a slum. The feature of this urbanisation is that it has been very rapid over the last century. The affects of which on the world, society are yet to come through. Even before industrialisation, land reform around the world has been the key to changing societal systems and the rise of the individual, a deep pre-conditioning for modern society. Before industrialisation, it was the land-landlord-tenant relations which defined the fabric for most lives, land reform led to surplus labour and eventual urbanisation along with industrialisation. Now it is something new and still evolving.
#6
Colonization of the world | Only four countries in the world can claim to have been always sovereign, never colonised by a European power. These four are Ethiopia, Liberia, Japan and Thailand. Americas, Asia and Africa all had near full colonial experience except for these abovementioned pockets. Whether formally annexed or informally through occupation, protectorates etc, the whole globe experienced it at the hands of European powers. Very few countries escaped it entirely during the colonial age. Hence these countries are exceptions for preserving sovereign institutions during that period.
#7
Gold, Silver, Bitcoin | ~216k tonnes of Gold has been mined in the world (two-thirds of it in last 75 yearsThe total market cap of gold at Sept ‘25 prices (all-time high, USD 117 k per kg, USD 3,649.73 per troy ounce) is close to USD 25 trillion. 46% is held as jewellery, 22% as private holdings, 17% as official holding with the maximum being held by USFederal reserve. To compare it against cryptocurrencies, say, Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a market cap of $2.3 trillion ($116k per Bitcoin, 19.9 million have been mined). Gold is measured as the value of total above ground stock. Bitcoin is measured as the value of total coins mined. By comparison, 1.74 million tonnes of silver has been mined, 8 times that of Gold. But of all the three, it has the smallest market cap of $2.2 trillion (at $1300 per kg). One of the things to note here is that Gold was $15 trillion a year and half ago. All this values above ground stock. The tradable values are much less. The largest company by Market Cap at the moment if Nvidia with $6.5 trillion.
#8
Stock Exchanges | The largest stock exchange in the world is New York Stock Exchange with a market cap of $28-30 trillion (around 2300+ companies). Followed by the tech-heavy NASDAQ with a combined market cap of ~25-27 trillion (3300 companies). Followed by Shanghai Stock Exchange $7 trillion (2200 companies). Euronext (1900 cos) and Japan Stock Exchange (3700 cos) are next, both with close to $6-$7 trillion market cap. Next few large exchanges are HK Exchange ($4.5-5 trillion, 2600 companies), Shenzhen Stock Exchange ($4-$4.5 trillion, c.2700 companies) , National Exchange of India ($4 – $4.3 trillion, c.2600 cos), Bombay Stock Exchange ($3.5-$3.7 trillion, 5500 companies), and London Stock Exchange ($3.5-$3.7 trillion, 2000 companies). These form the top 10. Top 10 exchanges account for 80-85% of the total global market cap ($128 trillion).
#9
Indices | It is interesting to note how the stock market indices have grown over the last decade. For instance, NASDAQ composite based on ~3,300 companies listed on NASDAQ has grown from ~5,000 in 2015 to ~21,000 at the moment (2025). This is a more than four-fold rise in 10 years. For the same period S&P 500 (the 500 biggest US stocks) have grown from c. 2,000 to c. 6,400. That itself is over three times growth. Looking further into the index, this is of course the largest growing companies, with tech making more than 50% of index concentration (compared to 30% in S&P 500), and the seven companies make more than 40% of the index weight. The seven companies Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google (Alphabet), Meta, Nvidia, Tesla — all Nasdaq-listed, have grown from combined market cap of ~$2–3 trillion in 2015 to $12–13 trillion+ in 2025. Even for S&P500, Apple and Microsoft alone are 15% of the index. A comparison of India, BSE Sensex (30 large companies) has grown from ~27k to ~80k. Nikkei 225 for its own easing reasons grew over 2.5 times during this period. Other indices such as FTSE 100, ASX All Ordinaries have grown but nowhere close to the American stocks.
#10
A new open world – Late 1980s, early 1990s| That small period opened the world. From geopolitical boundaries to economies. From Ethiopia to China, India in between, the markets around the world opened. A new exchange of information opened up with WWW as well. And we are still living through the unfolding effects of those changes. A large part of growth of world, a new flux of ideas can be attributed to this opened global marketplace. This also allowed a lot of financial opportunities. The marketplace still exists in some form, and the new flux is now created by AI, still a sub-set of the WWW changes. We are still in the unravelling froth of industrialisation, growth of services, a rapid rise in the levels of consumption and the digital economy.
#11
Ships | Over 80% of the world’s trade volume is carried by sea. It is estimated that there are around 58,000 carriers in the world DWT of 2.3 billion tonnes (Vessels of over 1000 gross tons). But a better metric is volume shipped. It is estimated that maritime trade reached 12,292 million tonnes in 2023. One has to look at this number with the perspective that in 1970 it was 2,605 million tonnes. World population meanwhile has grown from 3.7 billion to 8 billion people. So though the population has doubled, the total trade volume has grown close to five times in this period. In terms of other shipping info, globally more than 160 billion parcels are shipped annually.
#12
Pharmaceuticals | Global Pharma sector is USD 1.5-1.7 trillion. Half of global pharma revenue comes from the US, with around 4% of world population. By volume, globally, generics are 80%, off patent drugs. But by value, branded prescription drugs form 87% of the market. Most of these are in the US. China and India having the highest volume of generic drug sale hence in dollar terms the market is not comparable to US. In terms of a single drug, and how big the revenue can be, largest is Keytruda (Merck’s immunotherapy agent) with $29.5 billion in revenue. Think of it this way, that only 650 public companies in the world have revenues greater than that single drug.
#13
Advertising revenue in the world | The world spends over $1 trillion on advertising. (2024/2025). Ten years ago, this number was close to $545 billion. In 2015, 30% of this was digital spend, rest being print, TV etc. At the moment, close to 73% is digital spend. So not just the advertising pie has grown, the share of digital in the total pie has grown significantly as well. All this is reflected back in the revenue of some of the largest companies of the world. For a perspective, Google records $265 billion and Meta/ Facebook records $121 billion as advertising revenue. Followed by players like Amazon, Bytedance etc. In terms of spend budget, Amazon (#31 billion) tops the list followed by L’Oreal ($14billion).
#14
One of the largest investors in the world | Norges Investment Bank is an interesting case study for the world on how to transfer wealth within generations. Launched in 1996 as rainy-day savings, it now owns ~1.5% of the global listed markets. It is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world ($1.9 trillion). It was USD 16 – 20 billion in 1998 and USD 88 billion AUM in 2005, 20 years ago. It has a small stake in more than 8,500 companies around the world, and is the world’s single largest investor. It has been seeded ~$500 billion by oil and gas cash flows and rest are investment gains. The interesting point is that the Fund is ~four times Norway’s GDP which is $483 billion. Sovereign Wealth Funds around the world hold ~13.7 trillion in assets.