Typically, Asia's moguls list only part of their empires, while maintaining a string of affiliated private companies.

ECONOMIST: Asia��s stockmarket nightmare

Much of India's call-centre industry, which employs roughly 300, 000 agents, is located outside the ring road that encircles Bangalore, in a string of smart new business parks with tidy lawns and private security.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

After years of research and the expenditure of billions of dollars, universities, research institutions and private companies succeeded about 10 years ago in mapping the human genome, showing the long string of genetic materials that's found in all cells.

WSJ: New Home for Genome

Effectively Bitcoins are a very long meaningless string of digits that only have value if their owner uses a shorter related number, known as a private key, to spend them.

BBC: Bitcoin