Gautam Adani on Globalization

Adani dropped out of school at 16 and moved to Mumbai in 1978 to work as a diamond sorter for Mahendra Brothers, deliberately avoiding his father's textile trade. In 1981 he returned to Ahmedabad to manage elder brother Mahasukhbhai's plastics unit, which became his gateway to global trading via PVC imports and led to the 1988 founding of Adani Exports — today's Adani Enterprises, the group's holding company.

From 2009-2012, Adani acquired Abbot Point Port and the Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, Australia — controversial bets that drew sustained environmental opposition and became a recurring flashpoint in the global coal debate. The assets also marked Adani's first major overseas infrastructure footprint beyond trading.

Mundra Port's commercial operations began in 2001 alongside the City Gas Distribution business. The 2002 launch of single point mooring — which docked the MV Silver Clipper, India's first capesize vessel carrying nearly 123,000 tonnes of Australian resources — was the visible proof point that Mundra could handle global-scale dry bulk traffic.

The 2007 Mundra Port & SEZ IPO was 116 times oversubscribed, and Adani Power Ltd's 2009 IPO was 21x subscribed. The capital-markets access these IPOs unlocked fueled the overseas mine acquisitions in Indonesia (Bunyu, 2008) and Australia (Carmichael, 2010-2011), marking Adani's transition from domestic infrastructure operator to global resource player.