the indian tycoon Gautam Adani is the modern version of King Midas. He entered 2022 ranked 14th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and in nine months it reached second place, above Jeff BezosBernard Arnault, Bill Gates o Warren Buffet.
The dizzying growth of his fortune is surprising. While millionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Meta (Facebook) reported losses of up to 69 billion dollars, Adani has shown his ability to swim against the current like a salmon and records profits of 72 thousand 400 million dollars in recent months.
Comparing the performance of the fortunes of Adani and Elon Musk, founder of Teslait can be seen that the businessman of South African origin and owner of Starlink reports losses of 6 billion dollars in the last year.
But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Gautam Adani multiplied his fortune by 25 in just two years. On March 22, 2020, the Indian tycoon’s fortune was 6.6 billion dollars, according to the Bloomberg report. Since then, his income has skyrocketed to $146.9 billion, making him the second richest person in the world.
How did Gautam Adani’s fortune grow in two years?
Although his profits went to heaven, the Indian tycoon has not been spared a couple of stumbles that cost him up to 30 billion dollars.
After hitting a high of $77.7 billion in June 2021, Adani lost 25 billion dollars in a month and a half.
Once he got over that drop in his fortune, Gautam Adani accumulated eight months of increase in his wealth to reach a cap of 122 billion dollars last April.
From that peak, Adani’s fortune fell by 30 billion dollars in two months and stood at 90.6 billion dollars last June.
From that collapse, Gautam Adani returned to the path of growth and He currently has a fortune valued at 146 thousand 900 million dollars.
What are the businesses of Gautam Adani?
The Indian tycoon’s empire is built on his participation in his country’s largest private-sector port and airport operators. Also, has businesses as a distributor of urban gas and in coal mining. And if that was not enough, aspires to become the largest producer of renewable energy of the world.
Last year, promised to invest 70 billion dollars in green energya turnaround that has been criticized by some as greenwashing, because much of his conglomerate’s revenue comes from fossil fuels.
Throughout his rise to the top of the Millionaires Index, Gautam Adani has forged alliances with firms like Warburg Pincus and TotalEnergies SE, which helped boost his companies’ shares and his personal fortune by about $70 billion.
Most of Adani’s fortune is derived from public holdings held by the Adani Group, the Indian conglomerate he founded.
It owns a 75 percent stake in Adani EnterprisesAdani Power and Adani Transmissions, according to stock exchange documents from March 2022.
It also owns about 37 percent of Adani Total Gas, 65 percent of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone, and 61 percent of Adani Green Energy.
All of these companies are publicly traded and headquartered in Ahmedabad, India. The shares are held by promoting groups, including family members and holding companies that are credited to Adani to reflect his founder status.
Adani has the largest port operator, producer of thermal coal of closed property and coal trader in India, according to his website.
What can the Indian tycoon buy with his fortune?
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gautam Adani’s $146.9 billion is enough to buy 89.5 million ounces of gold or 1.63 billion barrels of oil.
Also, your fortune is equivalent to:
- 0.648 percent of the United States Gross Domestic Product
- 2.10 percent of the wealth of the 500 richest people in the world, or
- 2 million 103 thousand 747 times the average income of a household in the United States.
Who is Gautam Adani?
He was born in the western Indian state of Gujarat. After dropping out of college as a teenager, moved to Mumbai and worked in the diamond trade before returning to his home state.
He entered world trade when he imported polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, for his brother’s plastics business. In 1988, he created Adani Enterprisesthe flagship company of the group, to import and export basic products.
Adani Enterprises obtained approval from the Gujarat government in 1994 to establish a port facility to handle its own cargo at Mundra port. Sensing the potential of the project, Adani decided to turn it into a commercial port. Built road and rail links by negotiating individually with more than 500 landowners throughout India to create the largest port in India. Adani entered power generation in 2009.
the billionaire was kidnapped in 1997, according to its Mundra Port website. When terrorists attacked Mumbai 11 years later, Adani was among the hostages being held at the Taj waterfront hotel, according to the website.