Gautam Adani, the billionaire behind India’s Adani Group, has built an empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media, propelling him to fame as one of the wealthiest people alive.
But his rise hasn’t been without turbulence.
Adani’s fortune has been shaken by corporate fraud allegations, a stock crash and now a US indictment accusing him of orchestrating a US$265 million bribery scheme.
Who is the founder behind the sprawling conglomerate, and how did the 62-year-old become one of the world’s richest men?
FROM HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT TO TYCOON
Unlike many billionaires who inherit their wealth, Adani came from a middle-class family.
Born in Ahmedabad in western India’s Gujarat state, Adani dropped out of school at 16 to become a diamond trader in financial capital Mumbai.
After a short stint in his brother’s plastics business, he launched the flagship family conglomerate that bears his name in 1988 by branching out into the export trade.
His big break came seven years later with a contract to build and operate a commercial shipping port in Gujarat. It grew to become India’s largest at a time when most ports were government-owned.
Today, Adani Group spans airports, shipping ports, power generation, energy transmission and even cooking oil, making it one of India’s most influential conglomerates.
More recently, Adani set his eyes on becoming India’s biggest renewable energy player by 2030.
Outside India, it runs massive coal mining operations in Indonesia and Australia and has been described as the world’s largest private developer of coal.
Adani is worth US$69.8 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him the world’s 22nd richest person and India’s second-richest person behind Reliance Industries Chair Mukesh Ambani.
NARROWLY ESCAPED DEATH
On New Year’s Day in 1998, Adani and an associate were reportedly kidnapped by gunmen demanding a US$1.5 million ransom, before being later released at an unknown location.
A decade later, he was dining at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel when it was besieged by militants, who killed 160 people in one of India’s worst terror attacks.
Trapped with hundreds of others, Adani reportedly hid in the basement all night before he was rescued by security personnel early the next morning.
“I saw death at a distance of just 15 feet,” he said of the experience after his private aircraft landed in his hometown Ahmedabad later that day.
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