Gautam Adani: the Indian tycoon weathering stock market panic

The billionaire — who this week lost $25 billion to his net worth and tumbled from third to seventh place on Forbes’ global rich list

Indian industrialist Gautam Adani is Asia’s richest man, with a business empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media now rocked by corporate fraud allegations and a stock market crash.

But the billionaire — who this week lost $25 billion to his net worth and tumbled from third to seventh place on Forbes’ global rich list — is one of the business world’s great survivors.

On New Year’s Day in 1998, Adani and an associate were reportedly kidnapped by gunmen demanding $1.5 million in ransom, before being later released at an unknown location.

A decade later, he was dining at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel when it was besieged by militants, who killed 160 people in one of India’s worst terror attacks.

Trapped with hundreds of others, Adani reportedly hid in the basement all night before he was rescued by security personnel early the next morning.

“I saw death at a distance of just 15 feet,” he said of the experience after his private aircraft landed in his hometown Ahmedabad later that day.

Adani, now 60, differs from his peers among India’s mega-rich, many of whom are known for throwing lavish birthday and wedding celebrations that are later splashed across newspaper gossip pages.