The billionaire — who this week lost $25 billion to his net worth and tumbled from third to seventh place on Forbes’ global rich list
Indian industrialist Gautam Adani is Asia’s richest man, with a business empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media now rocked by corporate fraud allegations and a stock market crash.
But the billionaire — who this week lost $25 billion to his net worth and tumbled from third to seventh place on Forbes’ global rich list — is one of the business world’s great survivors.
On New Year’s Day in 1998, Adani and an associate were reportedly kidnapped by gunmen demanding $1.5 million in 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.
Credit: Reuters
Indian industrialist Gautam Adani is Asia’s richest man, with a business empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media now rocked by corporate fraud allegations and a stock market crash.But the billionaire — who this week lost $25 billion to his net worth and tumbled from third to seventh place on Forbes’ global rich list — is one of the business world’s great survivors.On New Year’s Day in 1998, Adani and an associate were reportedly kidnapped by gunmen demanding $1.5 million in 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.Adani, now 60, differs from his peers among India’s mega-rich, many of whom are known for throwing lavish birthday and wedding celebrations that are later splashed across newspaper gossip pages.A self-described introvert, he keeps a low profile and rarely speaks to the media, often sending lieutenants to front corporate events.“I’m not a social person that wants to go to parties,” he told the Financial Times in a 2013 interview.Adani was born in Ahmedabad to a middle-class family but dropped out of school at 16 and moved to financial capital Mumbai to find work in the lucrative gems trade.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 his home state of Gujarat.It grew to become India’s largest at a time when most ports were government-owned -- the legacy of a sclerotic economic planning system that impeded growth for decades and was in the process of being dismantled.