Adani is founder of Adani Group, one of India's major infrastructure conglomerates. The Ahmedabad, India-based group owns the country's biggest private port and is among the world's largest coal traders. Adani Enterprises, the group's flagship company, reported revenue of $10.9 billion in the year to March 31, 2025.
The bulk of Adani's fortune is derived from stakes in six publicly traded companies and two private companies that are part of the Adani Group, the Indian conglomerate he founded.
The companies and the stakes include Adani Enterprises (74%), Adani Power (75%), Adani Total Gas (37%), Adani Energy Solutions (73%), Adani Ports (68%), and Adani Green Energy (62%). Each of the companies are publicly traded and based in Ahmedabad, India. The shares are held by a group of individuals and entities that ultimately flow up to the Adani family's trust. They are credited to Gautam Adani to reflect his status as founder.
The Adani family owns 100% stake in Adani Realty, a real estate development company, and Adani Properties Pvt, which has interests across infrastructure and trading.
Adani Realty is valued using reported financial results and the average enterprise value-to-sales and price-to-sales multiples of five publicly traded peers, while Adani Properties is valued using reported financial results and the average enterprise value-to-sales and price-to-sales multiples of four publicly traded peers.
The Adani family also has businesses encompassing billions of dollars of assets and liabilities in a network of closely held companies that in many cases ultimately are controlled by the family trust or by Gautam's older brother, Vinod Adani. They include the family's stakes in Ambuja Cements and ACC, and debt taken on to finance those acquisitions.
The ownership of these assets and liabilities typically flows through series of entities in jurisdictions including Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands, which have been excluded from Adani's valuation given the lack of public disclosures.
Devendra Amin, a spokeswoman for Adani Group, declined to comment on emailed questions about the billionaire's net worth.
Gautam Adani was born in the western Indian state of Gujarat. After dropping out of college as a teenager, he worked in Mumbai's diamond trade before returning to his home state.
He made his foray into global trading when he imported polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, for his brother's plastic business. In 1988, he set up Adani Enterprises with his brothers Vinod and Rajesh to import and export commodities.
The company gained approval from the Gujarat government in 1994 to set up a harbor facility to handle its own cargo at Mundra Port. Sensing the potential in the project, Adani decided to turn it into a commercial port. He built rail and road links to it by individually negotiating with more than 500 landowners across India to create the largest port in India. He got into power generation in 2009 and also expanded into airports, coal and green energy.
The billionaire was held for ransom by bandits in 1997, according to his Mundra Port website. When terrorists attacked Mumbai 11 years later, Adani was among the hostages held at the seafront Taj hotel, according to the website.
In January 2023, a few months after Adani briefly had become the world's second-richest man, New York-based short seller Hindenburg Research accused the conglomerate of long-running stock manipulation and accounting fraud. Adani Group rejected the allegations, but the broadside wiped more than $150 billion off the group's market value and caused Adani's personal fortune to plunge by as much as 60%. The shares have since recovered.
Adani in August 2024 unveiled a plan to retire at 70 and hand over control of the conglomerate to his two sons and two of their cousins. The new structure will split management of the business in a way that requires them to work together. "I left the choice to the second generation as the transition must be organic, gradual and very systematic," Adani told Bloomberg News.