'Never stop trying, and don't be obsessed with the results' is not just a saying, but a mantra that is firmly believed by Gautam Adani, the Chairperson and Founder of the Adani Group. This mantra binds Gautam Adani to his roots and is also the reason for what makes him a success. At the age of 59, he has a net worth of about $80.6 billion (alongside his family), as of January 2022.
An Indian billionaire, he's a business tycoon who is one of the richest people in India. Adani built the bricks for the Adani Group in 1988, in order to spread its wings in the fields of agriculture, energy, logistics, aerospace and more.
Interestingly, Gautam was a dropout after the second year of his Bachelor's degree in commerce, as he believed that the world had more to offer and explore. He decided to work as a diamond sorter for Mahendra Brothers and after years of experience in that field, he decided to open his own venture - Zaveri Bazaar, a diamond brokerage firm in Mumbai. It was a year later when his elder brother called him to run the operations of the new plastic unit he owned in Ahmedabad, which gradually opened Gautam's doors to the global market with the import of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC).
The changing economic landscape played a helping hand as well. Economic liberalization was a boom period for the country and Gautam Adani made full use of it. In his initial years, he had his business focus on power and agriculture and with the budding scope and a bigger market, he decided to diversify his company's offerings in energy and logistics with interest in gas distribution, coal mining, trading, transmission and power generation.
One time in an interview, Adani quoted, "Either you sit on the pile of cash or you grow" and he has been relentlessly adhering to this. Inspiring the youth and serving a set of guiding principles for the freshers to follow, Adani has created his dream space - The Mundra Port as the largest private sector port in India. He's a visionary who knew what was the correct time to come up with his plan in accordance with the molding environment and sorted a way out for his monopoly in the segment of port business.
Gautam's extraordinary negotiating skills convinced Nitish Kumar, the former Railway Minister, to construct a railway line that would connect the port to the main railway network, which would be in the interests of the country and help the ports link their terminals to the national railway grid. This would make it the first port-rail linkage policy crafted to date.
When we speak about glory, Gautam Adani solidified his record by closing a ₹6000 crore deal by negotiation for 100 hours and seized the Udupi Thermal Power Plant. In spite of being a tycoon and earning such high power, Adani never let go of his idea of investing in the sectors that are of national priority. He stated, “Infrastructure sector is all about building assets for the country. It is a part of nation-building.”
Gautam Adani, when asked about his motivation behind his growth, said, "I could never take orders from anyone."