Adani family
Gautam Adani worked briefly as a diamond sorter in Mumbai before returning to Gujarat in 1981 to help run his brother's plastics business. In 1988 he founded Adani Exports as a commodity-trading company, later moving into metals and textiles as India's 1991 liberalization opened new opportunities.
How the fortune was built
The group's first major infrastructure asset, Mundra Port, built in the mid-1990s, marked the pivot from trading to owning physical infrastructure. From there, Adani expanded into coal, power generation, city-gas distribution, renewable energy (via Adani Green), airports, cement (acquiring Ambuja and ACC in 2022), and media. Group market cap sits above $125 billion, though valuations fell sharply after a January 2023 Hindenburg Research report alleging accounting and stock-manipulation issues, which the group denies.
Where the family invests today
US-based GQG Partners invested roughly $4.3 billion across several listed Adani entities beginning in March 2023, shortly after the Hindenburg report — a stake reportedly worth close to $10 billion by mid-2024. The group is now deploying capital into green hydrogen, AI-ready data centers, and a stated goal of 10 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035. There is no conventional external family office; capital flows through Adani Enterprises and its listed subsidiaries.
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