Indian billionaire Gautam Adani briefly took the position of the second richest person in the world on Friday, edging out giants Jeff Bezos and France's Bernard Arnault. Adani, with a net worth $154.7 billion, stayed in the second spot of the Forbes real time rich list only briefly, before being pushed back to the third sport by Jeff Bezos.
Tesla founder Elon Musk is at the top of the global rich list with a seemingly unassailable lead. Musk's net worth is pegged at a whopping $273.5 billion.
Another Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani, who was once Asia's richest, is at the ninth sport a net worth of $92 billion.
The French businessman regained the second spot as his wealth rose to $152.8 billion, while Adani's net worth slipped to $151.3 billion. Jeff Bezos stayed at the fourth spot with a net worth of of $149.7 billion.
Who is Gautam Adani?
Gautam Adani is a first-generation Indian businessman whose empire controls companies in diverse sectors like energy, ports, utilities, transport and logistics and airports.
The Adani Group is headquartered in Ahmedabad in the industrialized western Indian state of Gujarat. The Group's website says it employs 23,000 people.
The Group is a diversified organisation with market cap of over $166.5 billion comprising seven publicly listed companies as of June 2022.
Earlier this year, Adani made news when he committed a whopping $7.7 billion (600 billion rupees) for various social causes, breaking ranks with the Asian mega rich who rarely make charity contributions of such scale.
While US business magnates like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, among many others like him, have donated huge sums from their personal fortune, Asian tycoons have so far lagged behind in charity give-away.
According to the Economic Times, the Adani Foundation has been engaged in the creation of sustainable livelihoods, handling projects in health and nutrition, as well as education and the empowerment of women. The group's philanthropic network now covers 3.7 million people in 2,409 villages across 16 states in India, the report adds.
Meteoric Rise
Adani's rise as a global billionaire has nothing short of astounding. According to the Business Insider, before the pandemic struck, Adnani's total net worth was a mere $6 billion. This rose more than 2,400 percent in the last three years to make him one of the three richest businessmen in the world. In the process, he has also edged out long-entrenched Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries as the richest in the country. The Adani Group also edged past the Tata conglomerate in terms of market capitalization.
