According to the 2022 M3M Hurun Global Rich List, Gautam Adani, India’s and Asia’s second-richest person, added USD 49 billion to his wealth last year, which was more than the net addition of wealth by the top three global billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault.
Mukesh Ambani, the chairman, and CEO of Reliance Industries, an oil-to-retail giant whose net worth originally surpassed that benchmark in October, has now dipped slightly below $99 billion as per Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Adani’s growth is nothing short of spectacular. The college dropout who made his money in the coal sector has nearly doubled his income in the last two years, owing to a shift to green energy and infrastructure that has secured him financing from corporations like France’s Total SE and Warburg Pincus.
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According to some people with knowledge of the matter, Adani is planning to explore potential partnerships in Saudi Arabia while also buying a stake in the world’s largest oil exporter.
His focus on expanding in sectors that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sees as critical to the country’s long-term economic goals is paying off: Since 2020, some Adani Group equities have increased by more than 1,000%.
While the world’s 500 wealthiest people added more than $1 trillion to their total fortunes in 2021, Adani’s net worth increased by $42.7 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people. He briefly topped Ambani as Asia’s richest person in February.
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Adani and Ambani, the head of the oil-and-petrochemicals conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., have risen to the top of a wealth ranking dominated by people who made their wealth mostly in the United States’ technology industry. Ambani and Adani were free to rotate their conglomerate into new areas like e-commerce and technology, gaining billions of dollars in funding from investors such as Facebook and Google.
