Gautam Adani is the founder and chairman of the Adani Group, an Ahmedabad-based conglomerate spanning ports, power, airports, renewable energy, cement and more. He is ranked No. 1 on the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026.

What is Gautam Adani's net worth in 2026?

The M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026, released on 23 September 2026, put the wealth of Gautam Adani and family at about Rs 9.23 lakh crore (roughly US$96 billion), up 13% in a year. Real-time billionaire indices move daily with share prices.

How did Gautam Adani start his business?

He left formal education at 16, moved to Mumbai in 1978 and learned diamond sorting before starting his own diamond brokerage. In 1981 he returned to Ahmedabad to run his brother's small PVC film unit, began importing polymers after the 1985 import liberalisation, and set up Adani Exports (now Adani Enterprises) in 1988.

Where is Gautam Adani from?

He was born on 24 June 1962 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, to Shantilal and Shantaben Adani, a family of textile traders with roots in Tharad in north Gujarat.

What was the Adani–Hindenburg controversy?

In January 2023 US short seller Hindenburg Research alleged stock manipulation and accounting fraud at the Adani Group, which denied the claims. Group companies lost well over US$100 billion in market value. In September 2025 SEBI ruled the related-party allegations it examined were not established, and in September 2026 it dropped the case alleging Vinod Adani controlled offshore funds; some proceedings, including SEBI's case against Hindenburg, remain open.

What happened to the US bribery case against Gautam Adani?

A US indictment unsealed in November 2024 alleged a bribery scheme tied to solar contracts and misleading US investors, which the group denied. In May 2026 Gautam and Sagar Adani settled the SEC's civil case without admitting or denying the allegations, and in August 2026 a US judge dismissed the criminal charges against them with prejudice at the Justice Department's request.

What is Gautam Adani's education?

He studied at Sheth Chimanlal Nagindas Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad and left formal education at 16 in 1978 to work in Mumbai. He has said he regrets not completing college.

Gautam Adani Biography: From Diamond Sorter to India's Richest

Q: Who will succeed Gautam Adani?

In a 2024 Bloomberg interview he said he plans to step back around the age of 70, in the early 2030s, handing over to his sons Karan and Jeet and nephews Pranav and Sagar. The group later said parts of that report, including the timing, were misquoted.

Key facts
Born	24 June 1962, Ahmedabad, Gujarat [1]
Family roots	Tharad, north Gujarat; father Shantilal ran a small textile business [2] [3]
Education	Sheth C.N. Vidyalaya, Ahmedabad; left formal education at 16 [4] [1]
Family	Wife Dr Priti Adani (chairperson, Adani Foundation); sons Karan and Jeet [5]
Group	Adani Group: ports, power, transmission, airports, green energy, cement, mining, media, data centres
Hurun India Rich List 2026	Rank 1, “Gautam Adani & family”, about Rs 9.23 lakh crore [6] [7]
Known for	Building India’s largest private port operator from a salt-marsh jetty in Kutch

On the night of 26 November 2008, Gautam Adani was having dinner at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai with the chief executive of Dubai Ports when the gunfire started. He hid in the kitchen and a toilet as the attack unfolded, and walked out safe the next morning [8]. Ten years earlier, on 1 January 1998, he had been abducted outside Ahmedabad and released after a ransom was allegedly paid [9].

Few Indian business stories carry that much raw drama. Fewer still swing as wildly: the same man was briefly the world’s second-richest person in September 2022 [10], lost more than half his fortune within weeks in early 2023 [11], faced a US indictment in 2024 [12], and in September 2026 was back at No. 1 on the M3M Hurun India Rich List, with family wealth of about Rs 9.23 lakh crore [6].

This is the story of how a teenager who left school in Ahmedabad built one of the largest infrastructure groups in the world, what went wrong along the way, and what his critics and admirers each get right.

Where it began

Gautam Shantilal Adani was born on 24 June 1962 in Ahmedabad, one of eight children of Shantilal and Shantaben Adani [3] [13]. The family came from Tharad in north Gujarat, from what India Today described as “a community of entrepreneurs” [2]. His father ran a small textile trading business [3].

Adani has credited his father with his first business lesson. In a 2023 speech he recalled that his father traded on oral commitments, what bankers today would call “forward trades”, and that “these commitments never failed, and were my initial lessons on the power of trust” [14].

He studied at Sheth Chimanlal Nagindas Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad [4]. At 16, in 1978, he left. “I was just 16 years old when I chose to give up my education and move to Mumbai,” he said decades later. “All I knew was that – I wanted to do something different – and do it on my own” [1]. (Accounts differ on whether he left school or college; many profiles repeat a claim that he dropped out of a commerce degree, which we could not confirm from a credible source.)

He also says he tried for a college seat in Mumbai. Jai Hind College turned his application down in the late 1970s; in September 2024 the same college invited him to deliver its Teachers’ Day lecture [15] [16].

The first break

Mumbai in 1978 was a city of opportunity for a young Gujarati with no degree and little money. Adani says a cousin got him a job at Mahendra Brothers, where he learned to sort diamonds [1]. After about three years he started his own diamond brokerage at Zaveri Bazaar. His first trade, with a Japanese buyer, earned him a commission of Rs 10,000. “I was 19 years old, and this was the start of my journey as an entrepreneur,” he said in 2025 [17].

In 1981 his elder brother Mahasukhbhai called him back to Ahmedabad to help run a small PVC film factory the family had bought [16]. The unit had a problem common to Indian manufacturers of that era: it could not get enough raw material, because imports were tightly controlled and domestic supply was limited [4].

The fix came from Delhi. In 1985 the government relaxed import rules for polymers under the Open General Licence. “There are two turning points in my life,” Adani told The Economic Times in 2007. “One in 1985, when the government relaxed import norms… I began imports of raw materials – polymers – and entered trading” [4]. He has repeatedly credited Rajiv Gandhi’s export-import liberalisation: “But for Rajiv Gandhi, my journey as an entrepreneur would never have taken off” [18].

In 1988 he set up Adani Exports as a partnership firm; it became a company in 1993 and was renamed Adani Enterprises in 2006 [19]. The business traded commodities, and grew fast. Adani Exports listed on the stock exchanges in 1994 at Rs 150 a share, and its issue was subscribed 25 times [20]. By 1998, the group says, it had become India’s largest net foreign-exchange earner [21].

The second turning point, he said in the same 2007 interview, was 1991, when the Rao–Manmohan Singh reforms opened the economy [4].

Building the empire

Mundra: the port that made the group

The Adani Group as it exists today began on a stretch of salt marsh in Kutch. In the early 1990s, the Gujarat government allotted coastal land in Mundra for a salt project involving the US commodity giant Cargill; when Cargill withdrew after protests, Adani kept the land and began planning a jetty for his own cargo [22]. Congestion at other ports was delaying his shipments. “We were then only a trading company, a khokha company, an empty box,” he told India Today in 2011 [2].

Gujarat Adani Port Ltd was incorporated on 26 May 1998, the first berth opened in October 1998 and a 30-year concession was signed with the Gujarat Maritime Board in 2001 [23]. Years later he described the site to students in Mumbai: “What others saw as marshy barren land, we saw as a canvas waiting to be transformed. That canvas is now by far our nation’s largest port” [15].

The company listed as Mundra Port & SEZ in November 2007, raising Rs 1,771 crore in an issue subscribed about 115 times [23], and was renamed Adani Ports & SEZ in 2012. It then bought its way along India’s coastline: Dhamra in Odisha from Tata Steel and L&T in 2014, then Krishnapatnam, Gangavaram and Dighi around 2020–21, and Gopalpur in 2024 [24] [25]. Abroad it won Israel’s Haifa port with a local partner in 2022–23, a container terminal concession in Dar es Salaam in 2024, and opened a terminal in Colombo in April 2025 [26] [27].

In FY26 the ports business handled 500.8 million tonnes of cargo, about 27% of India’s total, with revenue of Rs 38,736 crore [28]. Mundra alone was the first Indian port to handle more than 200 million tonnes in a year [29].

Power, coal and the energy bet

From ports the group moved into what ships carry. Adani Power commissioned its first Mundra unit in 2009 and built a fleet of large coal-fired plants [20]; by FY26 it had 18,150 MW of capacity [30]. In 2018 the group bought Reliance Infrastructure’s Mumbai electricity business for Rs 18,800 crore, taking on more than three million customers [31].

To feed power plants it went after coal. It began mining in Indonesia in 2008 [20], and in 2010 bought the Carmichael tenement in Queensland, Australia. The project, planned at up to 60 million tonnes a year, became the focus of years of protests and court challenges before it was scaled down to about 10 million tonnes, self-funded, and shipped its first export cargo in December 2021 [32].

The next bet was the opposite fuel. Adani Green Energy, demerged and listed in 2018, grew into one of the world’s largest renewable developers. France’s TotalEnergies paid US$2.5 billion in 2021 for a 20% stake and a share of its projects [33]. At Khavda in Kutch the company is building a 30 GW renewable park; by FY26 Adani Green had 19.3 GW operating and a 2030 target of 50 GW [34].

Airports, cement, media

In February 2019 the group won five of the six airports the Airports Authority of India put up for 50-year leases, despite having no aviation experience [35]. In 2021 it took control of Mumbai’s airport, and on 25 December 2025 the new Navi Mumbai International Airport opened for commercial flights [36]. The group now says it handles more than a fifth of India’s air passengers [37].

In 2022 it bought Holcim’s controlling stakes in Ambuja Cements and ACC, in a deal valued at about US$10.5 billion including open offers, overnight becoming India’s second-largest cement maker [38]. Further acquisitions took capacity to 109 million tonnes a year by June 2026 [39]. The same year it took control of the broadcaster NDTV [40] and won the Rs 5,069 crore bid to redevelop Mumbai’s Dharavi slum [41].

More recently the focus has shifted to data centres, including a partnership with Google announced in October 2025 for a gigawatt-scale AI campus in Visakhapatnam [42], alongside copper smelting, defence and a planned airports IPO.

Scale, debt and wealth

The scale is hard to overstate. The group reported record capital expenditure of about Rs 1.53 lakh crore in FY26, and EBITDA of about Rs 94,834 crore [43]. It has 10 listed companies [44]. Its growth has also been debt-funded, which is where its critics have focused; the group says leverage has fallen and every company now carries a domestic rating of A- or better [43].

The wealth that puts Adani on rich lists is mostly his family’s controlling stakes in these listed companies. It has swung with their share prices. Hurun put the family at Rs 10.94 lakh crore in 2022 (No. 1), Rs 4.75 lakh crore in 2023 (No. 2, the biggest one-year fall in the list’s history), Rs 11.61 lakh crore in 2024 (No. 1), Rs 8.15 lakh crore in 2025 (No. 2) and Rs 9.23 lakh crore in 2026 (No. 1) [45] [46] [47] [48] [6].

The setbacks and failures

The biggest setback came in a single week in January 2023. Adani Enterprises was in the middle of a Rs 20,000 crore follow-on public offer when Hindenburg Research published its report (see below). The issue was fully subscribed, but the board called it off on 1 February. “For me, the interest of my investors is paramount and everything else is secondary,” Adani said in a video message [49].

Group companies lost well over US$100 billion in market value in the weeks that followed; at the low, the group’s combined market capitalisation had fallen by about two-thirds [50]. By 20 February 2023 Adani had dropped from world No. 3 to No. 25 on the Forbes and Bloomberg lists [11].

The response was a crash programme to rebuild trust: promoters prepaid about US$2.15 billion of share-backed loans [51], US fund manager GQG Partners bought US$1.87 billion of shares from the family in March 2023 [52], and the group paused some projects. By May 2026 the group’s shares had recovered roughly US$150 billion of value [53].

There were other stumbles. Kenya cancelled airport and power-line deals in November 2024 after the US indictment, and TotalEnergies paused new investments [54] [55]. In February 2025 Adani Green withdrew from two wind projects in Sri Lanka after a new government sought lower tariffs [56], and a power-supply deal with Bangladesh became mired in a dispute over dues and tariffs [57]. In 2022 an analyst report from CreditSights called the group “deeply overleveraged” before correcting some of its calculations [58].

Controversies and allegations

The Adani Group has faced more public scrutiny than almost any Indian company. Below are the main allegations, how the group responded, and where each stands as of 29 September 2026. None of these allegations has been proven in a criminal trial.

The 2007 SEBI order on Adani Exports

Allegation: In a May 2007 order, SEBI found that Adani promoter entities had “aided and abetted” entities of the stockbroker Ketan Parekh in manipulating Adani Exports shares between 1999 and 2001, and barred seven promoter entities from dealing in securities for two years [59]. A related criminal case by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office against Gautam and Rajesh Adani was later taken up in court.

Status: The market ban was served. The Bombay High Court set aside the revival of the SFIO case in March 2025 [60].

Alleged over-invoicing of imports

Allegation: In 2014 the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence alleged that Adani companies had over-valued imports of power equipment by several thousand crore rupees through a UAE entity [61]. Separately, it investigated coal import pricing; the Financial Times and OCCRP later published documents alleging Indonesian coal was overpriced [62].

Response and status: The group denied wrongdoing. The equipment case was dropped by the adjudicating authority in 2017, upheld by the appellate tribunal, and the Supreme Court dismissed the customs department’s appeal in March 2023 [61]. Litigation over the coal probe has been pending in the Supreme Court.

Hindenburg Research, 2023

Allegation: On 24 January 2023, US short seller Hindenburg Research accused the group of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”, alleging the use of offshore shell entities in Mauritius and elsewhere linked to Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod, and posed 88 questions. It disclosed it was short the group through US-traded bonds and non-Indian derivatives [63].

Response: The group published a 413-page rebuttal calling the report a “calculated attack on India” [64]. Adani later called it “a malicious attempt aimed at damaging” the group [65].

What happened next:

A Supreme Court-appointed expert committee found in May 2023 “no evident pattern of manipulation” and could not conclude there was a regulatory failure, while noting SEBI had “drawn a blank” on the ultimate ownership of some offshore funds [66].
On 3 January 2024 the Supreme Court declined to move the probe to a special team or the CBI, said third-party reports could not be treated as proof without verification, and asked SEBI to complete its investigation [67].
SEBI issued a show-cause notice to Hindenburg in 2024, alleging it shared its report with a hedge fund before publication; Hindenburg called the notice “nonsense”. That case is still open [68].
Hindenburg announced it was shutting down in January 2025, citing personal reasons [69].
On 18 September 2025 SEBI ruled the related-party allegations it examined were “not established” [70]. Adani wrote to shareholders that “what was meant to weaken us has instead strengthened the very core of our foundations” [71].
On 22 September 2026, five group companies settled disclosure-related proceedings with SEBI for about Rs 1.51 crore without admitting or denying the findings [72]. On 28 September 2026 SEBI said its investigation “has not been able to prove” that Vinod Adani controlled two offshore funds, dropping that case, while four companies and their directors settled a public-shareholding matter for about Rs 1.48 crore [73].

Status: The main Hindenburg allegations examined by SEBI have not been established. Some probes into offshore investors and trading, and SEBI’s case against Hindenburg, remain pending.

OCCRP, 2023

Allegation: In August 2023 the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported that two associates of the Adani family traded large amounts of Adani stock through Mauritius-based funds. OCCRP itself said it found “no evidence” that the money came from the Adani family [74].

Response: The group called the report “rehashed” and “baseless”.

Status: SEBI’s September 2026 order did not establish that Vinod Adani controlled the funds, but fined the two investors Rs 20 lakh each for not giving complete information [73].

The US indictment, 2024–2026

Allegation: On 20 November 2024, US prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment alleging that Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and others were part of a scheme to pay more than US$250 million in bribes to Indian officials to win solar power contracts, and misled US lenders and investors while raising money [12]. The US SEC filed a parallel civil case [75].

Response: The group called the charges “baseless” and said Gautam and Sagar Adani were not charged under the anti-bribery law (FCPA) itself, but with securities and wire fraud conspiracy [76] [77]. “Every attack makes us stronger,” Adani said in December 2024 [78].

What happened next:

On 14 May 2026, Gautam and Sagar Adani settled the SEC case without admitting or denying the allegations, paying civil penalties of US$6 million and US$12 million [75].
Separately, Adani Enterprises agreed a US$275 million settlement with the US Treasury over alleged sanctions violations involving LPG purchases [79].
The US Justice Department moved to drop the criminal case in May 2026. On 10 August 2026 Judge Nicholas Garaufis dismissed the charges against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and one other executive with prejudice. He criticised the “irregularities” in how the decision was reached and wrote that no one should mistake the ruling for a view on the merits [80] [81]. Adani said he welcomed it “with humility and deep respect for the judicial process” [80].
On 3 September 2026 the judge refused to drop separate charges against five co-defendants from other companies [82]. US senators have written to the Justice Department asking about a reported US$10 billion investment pledge; Adani has denied under oath any quid pro quo [83].

Status: The criminal case against Gautam Adani is closed without trial; the SEC matter is settled; related questions continue in Washington.

Political proximity

Allegation: Opposition parties, led by the Congress, have long alleged the group benefits from its closeness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, dating to his years as Gujarat chief minister [84] [85]. They have demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee inquiry.

Response: Adani says his big breaks came under Rajiv Gandhi in 1985 and the 1991 reforms, that projects are won by bidding, and that he operates in states ruled by opposition parties. “When a policy is framed, it is for all, not only for the Adani Group,” he said in a 2023 television interview [86].

Status: No court has found favouritism; no parliamentary committee was set up.

Claims labelled as conspiracy theories

Some narratives around the group are widely discussed but unproven. Claims that the Hindenburg report and OCCRP reporting were part of a foreign plot to destabilise India have been made by political figures, but no evidence of a coordinated plot has been produced. Equally, claims that the US case was dropped in exchange for investment have been denied by Adani under oath and by the Justice Department; they are the subject of a continuing congressional inquiry, not a finding [83].

Giving back

The Adani Foundation was set up in 1996 and is chaired by Priti Adani, a trained dentist who gave up practice to run it. It says it works across 22 states in education, health, livelihoods and community development [87].

On his 60th birthday in June 2022, the family pledged Rs 60,000 crore to healthcare, education and skill development, one of the largest such commitments in Indian corporate history [88]. When his younger son Jeet married in February 2025, Adani announced a further Rs 10,000 crore for social causes [89]. Soon after came plans for 1,000-bed “Adani Health City” hospitals in Ahmedabad and Mumbai with Mayo Clinic as adviser, and a network of 20 K-12 schools with GEMS Education in which 30% of seats are free for underserved children [90] [91].

Earlier, the foundation gave Rs 100 crore to the PM CARES fund in 2020 [92] and the group offered to fund the schooling of children orphaned by the 2023 Odisha train crash [93]. Not every gift was accepted: Telangana declined a Rs 100 crore donation to a skills university after the US indictment [94].

Succession

In August 2024 Adani told Bloomberg he planned to step back at around 70, in the early 2030s, handing over to his sons Karan and Jeet and nephews Pranav and Sagar. “I left the choice to the second generation as the transition must be organic, gradual and very systematic,” he said [5]. The group later said some details were misquoted [95]. Karan Adani became managing director of Adani Ports in January 2024, and in August 2025 Gautam Adani moved to non-executive chairman there [96].

What their journey teaches

1. Policy windows reward the prepared. Adani did not create India’s 1985 import reforms or its 1990s port privatisation, but he was ready to act on both within months. Watching regulation closely is a business skill.

2. Build the bottleneck, not just the business. Mundra began because his own cargo was stuck at congested ports. Owning the chokepoint, a port, a transmission line, an airport, gave the group pricing power and a platform for everything else.

3. Scale bought with debt is fragile. The 2023 crash showed how quickly confidence can vanish when a group is highly leveraged and its valuation is stretched. As NYU professor Aswath Damodaran wrote at the time, political connections and family control can be a competitive edge that is also a risk [97].

4. Trust is an asset you keep repaying. Returning Rs 20,000 crore of subscribed money, prepaying pledged loans and publishing detailed rebuttals were expensive choices, and they are a large part of why investors came back.

5. Scrutiny grows with ambition. Adani’s own line after the US case — “the bolder your dreams, the more the world will scrutinise you” [78] — is also a caution: the bigger the footprint in public infrastructure, the higher the bar for transparency.

Whatever one concludes about the controversies, few Indian lives capture the country’s economic transformation as vividly: a school-leaver sorting diamonds in 1978, a trader riding the 1985 reforms, and by 2026 the man running some of India’s largest ports, airports and power grids — and, once again, its richest person.

A profile for general reading, based on public records and reporting as of 29 September 2026. Not investment, tax or legal advice.