Gautam Adani, Chairman, Adani Group

With Mr. Gautam Adani as the Chairman and Promoter, the Adani Group is a Gujarat based Indian conglomerate. Born in a Gujarati Jain family, Mr. Adani, at a young age of 18, went to Mumbai with only a few hundred rupees and worked as a diamond sorter at Mahindra Bros. After 2 years he set up his own diamond brokerage outfit at Zaveri Bazaar.

His elder brother Mansukhbhai Adani, bought a plastics unit in Ahmedabad in 1981 and wanted Gautam to run it. Mr. Gautam Adani returned to Ahmedabad and this was the beginning of his journey into global trading by beginning to import Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) which is a key raw material for manufacturing plastics.

While working at his brother's plastics unit, Mr. Adani gained valuable working experience of working with the intricacies of Global Trade. During the late 1980s, young entrepreneurs were looking to enter the relatively new and exciting sectors of Software and Telecom. But Mr. Adani ventured into what merchants and East India Company used to do 1000 of years ago under the British rule. The Adani Group, along with its flagship company, Adani Enterprises Ltd. (formerly known as Adani Exports Ltd.), was established by Mr. Adani in 1988 as a Partnership firm with a capital of 5 lacs.

The Adani Group had a quiet beginning but Mr. Adani used his skills of persuasion to get beneficial land allotment policies and guidelines from the bureaucracy. His entrepreneurial and ambitious vision along with rigorous hard work made the Adani Group one of the fastest growing professionally owned enterprises in India. The group's core businesses include commodities trading, edible oil manufacturing, port operations and distribution of Natural Gas. Apart from these, the Group has also diversified into Real Estate, Ports, Special Economic Zones, and IT enabled services.

Its expansion was accompanied by a synergy among its business units to bring them together and make them more productive and competitive. The group emphasizes on converting partnerships into winning relationships and is committed to satisfy its stakeholders by constantly delivering good returns. Its journey to become one of India's most trusted and diversified trading houses was fast and worth imitating. Maintenance of world-class quality standards and a customer focused approach helped the Adani Group to achieve revenues of $10 billion by 2015.