When Gautam Adani woke up on New Years Day this year, a mere 117 days ago, his net worth stood at $75 billion. While certainly a very respectable personal fortune, sadly $75 billion was not even enough to make Gautam the richest person in India, his native country. That honor went Mukesh Ambani, who started the year with a net worth of $90 billion.
At $75 billion, Gautam was not quite rich enough to rank among the world's 10 richest people. He had to settle for #13.
Fast forward to the present.
Over the last 117 days, Gautam Adani's fortune has increased by $50 billion. No other billionaire's fortune has increased by a larger amount in 2022. The billionaire whose fortune has increased the second-most in 2022 so far? Mukesh Ambani. Mukesh's net worth has increased by $14 billion so far this year, landing him at $104 billion.
Thanks to that $50 billion increase, Gautam Adani's net worth just hit an all-time high of $125 billion.
At today's market close, $125 billion makes Gautam the richest person in India. He is the richest Indian person in modern history.
And just this week Gautam leapfrogged Warren Buffett to become the fifth-richest person in the world overall. At this point Gautam is just $3 billion shy of Bill Gates.
(Photo by Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint via Getty Images)
Gautam Adani earned his fortune as the founder of the Adani Group which owns interests in power plants, ports, coal mining, gas and more. He owns 75% of the publicly-traded Adani Enterprises which he founded in 1988.
Over the last five years, Adani Enterprises' share price has increased 2,000%, with a large chunk of that explosion occurring in just he last few years. Exactly two years ago, Gautam's net worth was "just" $7 billion. Here's a chart of Adani's stock price over the last five years:
If I were Bill Gates, Bernard Arnault and Jeff Bezos (the world's fourth, third and second richest people), I would be nervous right about now. Gautam still has a ways to go to catch up to Elon Musk's world-leading $250 billion net worth.
