Who is Gautam Adani, the man who made the most money in the world in 2022

The person who made the most money in 2022 is an Indian: Gautam Adani, called the “king of infrastructure” in the Asian country of more than 1.4 billion people.

He is known for being one of India’s biggest entrepreneurs, with investments ranging from coal mines, one of his first businesses, to power plants, ports and airports.

All of the businesses are part of the Adani Group’s portfolio, whose recent stock price appreciation on the Indian stock market has made Adani’s fortune jump $43.4 billion since January, according to the Bloomberg ranking of billionaires.

With that, his net worth is now US$ 120 billion, which makes him the richest person in Asia – and the fifth in the world, ahead of names like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Alphabet (which owns Google), and American mega-investor Warren Buffett.

Adani’s fortune began to multiply rapidly during the pandemic, a time when the businessman began to announce a series of investments.

One of the group’s most attention-grabbing plans is to invest US$70 billion in projects linked to renewable energy by 2030, a measure that is in line with the plans of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Indian leader committed during COP26, in 2021, to zero carbon emissions in the next 50 years. More than that, he promised that half of the energy produced in the country will come from renewable energies – today, they represent only 3% of the matrix.

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At 18 and not a big fan of studying, Adani dropped out of college and moved from his hometown of Ahmedabad to Mumbai, where he started a company aimed at differentiating real diamonds from cheap copies.

The business evolved into buying and selling gemstones, and at age 20, he became a millionaire.

He then went on to work in foreign trade at a plastics factory in Ahmedabad, recently purchased by one of his brothers. Adani handled both the purchase of raw materials and sales. The business evolved into coal mining and, benefiting from India’s trade opening in 1991, he became one of the country’s great entrepreneurs.

The escalation continued with him winning the contract to privatize the Port of Mundra, India’s largest commercial port (and most important coal import point).

In recent years, with Modi’s support for Indian infrastructure development, the tycoon has moved into other areas. Today, he commands seven airports, which represent practically 25% of all air traffic in the country.

Now, Adani has expanded its operations in neighboring countries, such as Sri Lanka, where it will build a port terminal.

To top it off, it also started investing in recent months in data centers, a segment in which it wants to operate throughout India, which has become one of the most important technological hubs in the world. The information is from the newspaper. The State of São Paulo.