The tale of Adani’s scandal-plagued, wheeling-and-dealing ascent is also the story of India’s post-Cold War economic boom and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to power.
By Giacomo Tognini and John Hyatt
Gautam Adani was not marked for success. One of eight siblings, he was the fourth of five sons. His dad owned a small textile shop. He dropped out of high school at 16.
Today, Adani, 60, is the 24th wealthiest person in the world with a $47.3 billion fortune. He is the face of India’s Adani Group, the $38 billion (2022 sales) energy and infrastructure conglomerate.
How did Adani do it? The ingredients of his success include street smarts, politicking, a preternatural ability to overcome controversies and investigations, and plain old dumb luck. Most of all, his good fortune includes a near-four-decades-long relationship with Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister since 2014. Now that fortune is in peril, after U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research released a scathing report in January that crashed the stock of the Adani Group’s publicly traded companies and spurred investigations by India’s Supreme Court and its stock market regulator. Huge debts also weigh heavily on his empire.
Here is the timeline of Gautam Adani’s rise:
Dinodia/Alamy
1978
Adani drops out of school and moves in with brother Vinod in Mumbai, where he sorts diamonds.
Amit Dave/Reuters/Alamy
1988
Gautam starts commodity trading outfit Adani Exports.
1991
Vinod Adani is appointed a director of two firms based in Singapore, the first example Forbes found of his offshore companies.
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1994
Adani Exports, now called Adani Enterprises, goes public.
1997
Gautam is kidnapped by gangsters and held hostage for 18 hours in Ahmedabad before
being released.
Soumik Kar/Getty Images
1998
Adani opens Mundra Port, one of the first privately developed ports in India and now the country’s busiest.
Amit Dave/Reuters/Alamy
October, 2001
Narendra Modi is appointed chief minister of Gujarat.
May, 2007
India’s stock market regulator SEBI bans several Adani Group companies from buying or selling securities for two years for their role in an alleged stock-rigging scheme between 1999 and 2001.
November, 2007
Adani Ports goes public.
Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images
March 2008
Gautam debuts on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $9.3 billion.
December 2010
SEBI investigates Adani Enterprises for alleged stock manipulation in 2004 and 2005.
Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
May 2011
Adani Enterprises buys a 99-year lease for the Abbot Point coal terminal in Australia for $2 billion.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
May, 2014
Modi is elected to a five-year term as India’s prime minister.
India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) investigates two Adani Power subsidiaries for their alleged overvaluation of power plant equipment imports.
March 2016
The DRI announces an investigation into 40 companies, including five Adani firms and five companies supplied by Adani, for artificially inflating the value of coal imports.
August 2017
The DRI drops its investigation into the overvaluation of power plant equipment.
Piotr Swat/Alamy
June 2018
Adani Green Energy goes public on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
July 2019
The Adani Group wins the right to operate six Indian airports.
October 2019
The Bombay High Court blocks the DRI’s efforts to obtain overseas corporate information regarding the coal trading scandal. India’s Supreme Court reverses this decision in January 2020, but the investigation is ongoing.
Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
February 2020
French energy major TotalEnergies pays $714 million for 37.4% of Adani Gas.
January 2021
TotalEnergies pays $2 billion for a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy.
September 2022
Gautam briefly becomes the world’s second-richest person, with a net worth of $158 billion.
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The Adani Group pays $6.5 billion for controlling stakes in Indian cement producers Ambuja and ACC.
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December 2022
The group buys a majority stake in Indian news network NDTV.
January 2023
Hindenburg Research releases its Adani investigation; Adani responds with a 413-page denial.
February 2023
Adani Enterprises cancels its $2.5 billion follow-on public offering at the last minute.
March 2, 2023
India’s Supreme Court orders SEBI to conduct an investigation into Hindenburg’s allegations. On the same day, Florida-based asset management firm GQG Partners invests $1.9 billion in four Adani companies.