Gautam Adani Becomes First Asian, To Be The Third Wealthiest Globally

Gautam Adani, who not many people outside of India knew, a few years ago is now the first Asian to become the third richest globally. For the first time an Asian has made to the top three of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Other billionaires including Jack Ma and Mukesh Ambani never made to this spot.

With the wealth worth $137.4 billion, Adani has gone ahead of France's Bernard Arnault and now ranks just below Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Initially, Adani started his career as a diamond trader and then moved on to build his coal-to-ports conglomerate. The college drop out has precisely left no business domain untouched and ventured into everthing from alumina, media, data centers to cement. The conglomerate in its portfolio has the country's largest private sector port, airport, coal mine and City-gas distributor.

Nevertheless as the conglomerate's deals are largely funded by debt, CreditSights in its recent report released this month raised concerns and called his group "deeply over-leveraged". The Fitch Group arm further cautioned that in a worst case situation it may result in default by the Group.

The company in November last year committed to invest $70 billion towards green energy to top the renewable energy segment globally.

Also, the billionaire to mark his 60th birthday this year in June pledged to donate $7.7 billion towards social causes.