India's Top 100 Billionaires 2026: Gautam Adani rises above the tempest to triumph

FY26 WAS A defining year for the Adani Group and its 64-year-old chairman, Gautam Adani. Beyond the scale of its financial and operational performance, the year marked another significant step in Adani’s comeback amid extraordinary scrutiny. It also underscored the infrastructure-led strategy that has defined his four-decade journey — one that has steadily expanded across energy, transport, logistics, manufacturing, and emerging technologies. For years the journey was largely smooth, weathering the occasional storm, until January 2023, when U.S.-based short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report alleging stock manipulation and accounting irregularities. The group, however, continued to invest, adding capacity, commissioning projects, and committing capital to businesses linked to India’s long-term economic growth. Its capital expenditure (capex) rose from ₹71,000 crore in FY24 to ₹1.26 lakh crore in FY25 and then to a record ₹1.53 lakh crore in FY26, more than doubling in two years. The sharp rise in capex signalled renewed momentum in the group’s infrastructure build-out. For Adani — the response to the turbulence has centred on execution: strengthening the balance sheet, delivering projects at scale and building businesses around structural shifts in energy, manufacturing, logistics, and technology. Adani ranks No.2 on Fortune India’s 2026 study of India’s Top 100 Billionaires, with a net worth of ₹8,52,104 crore ($89.49 billion). Addressing shareholders at the annual general meeting of Adani Enterprises on June 24, Adani reflected on the recent years marked by “unprecedented, extraordinary scrutiny” and “equally remarkable growth”. The group’s successful ₹25,000-crore rights issue earlier this year — one of the largest in India Inc.’s history — was, in Adani’s words, far more than a fundraising exercise. “I saw it as a referendum on our credibility,” he said, alluding to the turbulent years the group has navigated. “While others debated, your group built—advancing its journey as the world’s most integrated infrastructure platform across energy, transport, logistics, and industrial manufacturing,” Adani told shareholders in an emotionally-charged address. The numbers reflect that determination to keep building. The ₹1.53-lakh-crore ($16.1-billion) investment in FY26 was the highest annual capex by any Indian corporate. More than 30% of India’s new private sector capex during the year came from the Adani Group, while nearly 80% of its investments were directed towards core infrastructure platforms spanning energy, utilities, transport and logistics. The group’s asset base has reached ₹7.85 lakh crore ($82.2 billion). Consolidated revenue rose 7.4% year-on-year to ₹2.92 lakh crore in FY26, while Ebitda reached an all-time high of ₹94,834 crore ($10 billion), up 5.6% YoY, with the core infrastructure business contributing 87% of earnings. PAT increased 13.9% to ₹46,376 crore, while cash flow touched ₹67,995 crore. At the end of FY26, cash balance stood at ₹55,852 crore ($5.9 billion), equivalent to 15% of gross debt, while net debt-to-Ebitda stood at a healthy 3.3x. “This progress did not come in calm conditions. It came in the middle of extraordinary scrutiny,” Adani said. The strength of the group, according to Adani, lies in the interconnected nature of its businesses. From mining and power generation to transmission and distribution, from ports and logistics to data centres, fulfilment centres, roads and water infrastructure, the group — spread across 11 listed companies and 30 businesses — is building an ecosystem spanning critical layers of nation-building. “We saw early that the world was entering a new era — one where geopolitical fault lines would deepen, supply chains would fragment, and energy security would return as a strategic priority. We saw that the race for technological leadership and sovereignty would be constrained not by ambition, but by infrastructure,” Adani said during the address. That approach is increasingly visible in the composition of the portfolio. Established businesses provide scale, while newer investments are aimed at opportunities emerging from India’s energy transition, industrial expansion, and growing digital economy. The utility business, comprising Adani Power, Adani Green Energy, Adani Total Gas, and Adani Energy Solutions, delivered a 4.6% YoY growth at ₹45,377 crore in FY26. The transport business, including APSEZ and Adani Enterprises’ logistics operations, grew 23.2% to ₹25,228 crore. Adani Enterprises’ infrastructure businesses grew 13.8% to more than ₹11,000 crore, while overall revenue from its infrastructure business came in at ₹82,083 crore, an 11% growth YoY. Energy remains the backbone of the portfolio. Adani Energy Solutions’ transmission order book rose to ₹72,000 crore in FY26, making it India’s only private sector player with proven high-voltage direct current capabilities. Adani Power, meanwhile, is executing India’s largest private sector power expansion programme, involving investments exceeding ₹2 lakh crore, with a target of 45 GW of installed capacity over the next five years. The group is developing 5,000 MW of hydropower projects in Bhutan, in partnership with Druk Green Power Corp. The energy ambitions are also extending into nuclear power. Adani Atomic Energy plans to establish 10 GW of nuclear power capacity, while Adani Total Gas has crossed 1.1-million piped natural gas connections for households. The group’s transport and logistics operations are similarly expanding in scale. Adani Ports handled over 500 million tonnes (MT) of cargo during FY26, setting a new benchmark and creating a pathway towards achieving 1 billion tonnes by 2030. The Vizhinjam International Seaport in Kerala, strategically positioned on one of the world’s busiest maritime routes, crossed the milestone of 1 million TEUs (twenty foot-equivalent units) in its first full year of operations. The expansion of ports and logistics also supports the group’s industrial ambitions, providing the networks needed to move commodities, equipment and finished goods as India seeks to deepen its manufacturing base and integrate more closely with global supply chains. Several of the group’s newer businesses are also beginning to move from incubation to scale. The Adani New Industries ecosystem, which manufactures solar and wind equipment, crossed sales of 1,340 MW of solar products and 64 sets of wind turbine generators in Q1FY27. The airports business handled more than 94 million passengers in FY26, while aero and non-aero revenues delivered a robust YoY growth of 16% and 53%, respectively, in Q1FY27. The recently commissioned Navi Mumbai International Airport began international flight operations on July 15. Increased mining operations, higher copper production and the commissioning of the Ganga Expressway were among the other major developments. But it is the group’s ambitious bets on new industries and technologies that could define the next phase of growth. Adani Enterprises and French clean-technology company Dioxycle recently signed a long-term partnership to develop and scale low-carbon chemical production in India, beginning with a pilot facility at an Adani Group site to produce formic acid using captured carbon dioxide and renewable electricity. Following successful validation, the partners plan to scale the technology for commercial manufacturing. Another mega project is the proposed $11.5-billion integrated greenfield aluminium project in Odisha through a 50:50 joint venture between Adani Enterprises and 2PointZero, a subsidiary of International Resources Holding, the Abu Dhabi-based natural resources investment platform. The proposed investment, valued at approximately ₹1.08 lakh crore ($11.5 billion), is expected to be Odisha’s largest foreign direct investment (FDI) proposal and India’s largest FDI in the metallurgy sector. The project comprises a 4-million-metric-tonne-per-annum (MMTPA) alumina refinery, a 2-MMTPA aluminium smelter, a 4,000-MW captive power plant, and a 1-MMTPA downstream manufacturing park. But perhaps, the most ambitious of the group’s future bets lies at the intersection of energy and AI. Adani has outlined one of the world’s largest integrated energy-compute commitments — an investment of $100 billion to develop renewable energy-powered, hyperscale, AI-ready data centres by 2035, along with an additional $150 billion across server manufacturing, advanced electrical infrastructure, sovereign cloud platforms, and supporting industries. Together, the group projects a $250-billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India. The planned 5-GW deployment is intended to create the world’s largest integrated data centre platform, combining renewable power generation, transmission infrastructure and hyperscale AI compute within a single coordinated architecture. Central to this strategy is Adani Green Energy’s 30-GW Khavda project in Gujarat, of which more than 10 GW is already operational. The group has also committed another $55 billion to expand its renewable-energy portfolio, including one of the world’s largest battery energy storage systems. The convergence of renewable energy and AI infrastructure is already taking shape through AdaniConneX, a JV between Adani Enterprises and EdgeConneX. AdaniConneX and Google are developing India’s largest AI data centre campus and new green energy infrastructure in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, with an investment of approximately $15 billion over five years from 2026 to 2030. For Adani, these investments are part of a larger vision rather than isolated projects. Energy generation can support data centres, transmission infrastructure can connect power with demand, ports and logistics can move equipment, and industrial platforms can support manufacturing. The group, which has bet on infrastructure over the past four decades, is now expanding into a new frontier — where energy, manufacturing, logistics and AI increasingly converge. Adani intends to be at the centre of it.

India's Top 100 Billionaires 2026: Gautam Adani rises above the tempest to triumph

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