India’s Gautam Adani surpasses Mukesh Ambani as Asia’s richest person with $88.5bn net worth

Mr Adani added more to his personal net worth this year than anyone else in the world

File: Gautam Adani is the world’s biggest wealth gainer this year (AFP via Getty Images)

Gautam Adani has become Asia’s richest person, toppling fellow Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

The 59-year-old’s net worth is now $88.5bn (£65.3bn), while Mr Ambani’s net worth was $87.9bn (£65bn) as of Monday.

Mr Adani has also become the world’s biggest wealth gainer this year after his personal fortune witnessed a jump of $12bn (£9bn).

“The Adani Group has spotted and entered all the happening sectors at the right time, which has appealed to a select band of foreign portfolio investors,” Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at Mumbai-based brokerage HDFC Securities Ltd, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

“The sectors are capital-intensive and the company has faced little difficulty in raising funds to expand,” he added.

Mr Adani started off by foraying into coal — first into trading and then building India’s largest thermal power capacity plant in the private sector.

He then shifted focus towards renewable energy and pledged a $70bn (£52bn) investment towards renewables. His company is touted to be the world’s largest renewable power producer by 2030.

The Indian billionaire also forayed into India’s aviation sector in 2019. His company Adani Airports recently won the mandate to modernise and operate airports in six cities across India, including Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram.

The Mundra Port — that Adani Group considers to be its crown jewel — is now the largest privately-run port in the country. It also houses a 4,620MW coal-based power plant.

Mr Adani, who had dropped out of college, belongs to a middle-class business family that focused on the textile trade.

He had initially began his career in the diamond trade in the early 1980s and had later he returned to Gujarat to work with his brother in his small plastics factory.

He started his own company — which is now the Adani Group — in 1988 to enter the commodities trading business.

Several climate campaigners and activists have criticised Mr Adani’s claims of bringing in sustainability and his green ambitions.

They point to the Adani Group’s Carmichael coal mining project in Australia that has long been mired in controversy.

The Australian government had stripped away the legal protections of more than 1,385 hectares of land in Wangan and Jagalingou country in Queensland so that it can be mined.

The Adani group said in December last year that it was ready to begin its first coal exports from the Australian mine.