gautam adani success story
Gautam Adani Success Story: The country’s well-known industrialist Gautam Adani applied to a college in Mumbai for studies in the 1970s. But the college rejected his application. He did not study further, but turned to business and built an empire of $ 220 billion in about four and a half decades. Now he was invited to the same college to give a lecture to the students on Teacher’s Day. Introducing Adani, one of India’s richest people, Vikram Nankani, president of the Jai Hind College Alumni Association, said that he moved to Mumbai at the age of 16 and started working as a diamond sorter. He applied for admission to the city’s Jai Hind College in 1977 or 1978. But his application was rejected. He had applied to Jai Hind College because his elder brother Vinod had studied in the same college earlier.
I did not get admission so I started a business
Nankani, while giving Gautam Adani the status of ‘alumnus’, said, “Fortunately or unfortunately, the college did not accept his application and he started working on his own and took up an alternate career.” He worked as a diamond sorter for about two years. After that, he returned to his home state Gujarat to run a packaging factory. This factory was run by his brother. Adani never looked back after starting his company trading in commodities in 1998. Over the next two and a half decades, his companies ventured into sectors such as ports, mines, infrastructure, power, city gas, renewable energy, cement, real estate, data centers and media.
Today Adani has a huge business empire
Today Adani’s companies are involved in various businesses. His infrastructure sector company also operates 13 ports and seven airports in the country. Today his group is also the largest private sector entity in the power sector. Not only this, his company is the largest renewable energy producer, runs the country’s second largest cement company, is building expressways and is redeveloping Asia’s largest slums. Some people have described it as the most aggressive among India’s new generation of entrepreneurs.
Why did Adani go to Mumbai?
Delivering a lecture on ‘Breaking Boundaries: The Power of Passion and Unconventional Paths to Success’, 62-year-old Adani said he was only 16 when he decided to break his first boundary. “It had to do with quitting studies and moving into an unknown future in Mumbai. People still ask me, ‘Why did you move to Mumbai? Why didn’t you complete your education?'” Adani said, “The answer lies in the heart of every young dreamer who sees boundaries not as obstacles but as challenges that test his courage.” “I felt I had the courage to live my life in the most important city of our country,” he said.
Dream beyond limits
Mumbai was his training ground for business as he learnt to sort and trade diamonds. “The field of doing business makes a good teacher. I learnt long ago that an entrepreneur can never be stagnant by over-evaluating the options before him. It is Mumbai that taught me to think big. You must first have the courage to dream beyond your boundaries,” Adani said. Adani formed a business outfit in the 1980s to import polymers to supply struggling small-scale industries. “By the time I turned 23, my business venture was doing well,” he said. He founded a global trading house dealing in polymers, metals, textiles and agro-products after the 1991 economic liberalisation when he was just 29.
IPO came in 1994
“Within two years, we became the largest global business house in the country. Then I understood the combined value of both speed and scale,” Adani said. “After this, in 1994 we decided it was time to get listed and Adani Exports came out with its IPO (initial public offering). It is now known as Adani Enterprises. The decision to bring an IPO was successful and it made me understand the importance of public markets,” Adani said. He realised that to break further boundaries, he would first have to start by challenging his status quo and invest in assets to provide a solid foundation.
This is how Mundra port was built
Adani was approached by global commodity trader Cargill in the mid-1990s for a partnership to manufacture and source salt from Gujarat’s Kutch region. “Though the partnership did not materialise, we were left with about 40,000 acres of marshland and approval to build a jetty for private use at Mundra (in Gujarat) for export of salt,” he said. What others saw as a marshy wasteland, he saw as a huge area waiting for a makeover. The area is now India’s largest port. “Munddra today has India’s largest port, largest industrial special economic zone, largest container terminal, largest thermal power plant, largest solar manufacturing facility, largest copper plant and largest edible oil refinery. Not only this, we are using only 10 per cent of what Mundra will eventually become,” he said.
World’s largest renewable energy park to be built in Kutch
Adani said he is now building the world’s largest renewable energy park in Kutch and redeveloping the Dharavi slum in Mumbai. “Though we have helped redefine India’s infrastructure in airports, ports, logistics, industrial parks and energy, it is not the victories that define us. It is the mindset of facing challenges and overcoming them that has beautifully shaped the journey of the Adani Group,” he said.
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