Adani overtakes Ambani as India's richest, how educated is Gautam Adani

Whenever India's richest businessmen and billionaires are discussed, the names of Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani come up first. According to the recently released M3M Hurun India Rich List 2026, Gautam Adani and his family have once again topped the list of India's wealthiest people. The Adani family's total net worth has risen to around Rs 9.23 lakh crore, up 13 percent from last year. But very few people know how educated Gautam Adani, who built such a massive business empire, actually is.

Gautam Adani was born on 24 June 1962 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, into a middle-class Jain family. His father Shantilal ran a textile business. Gautam has seven siblings in all, and his family had moved to Ahmedabad from Tharad town in north Gujarat in search of livelihood. Gautam did his schooling at Sheth Chimanlal Nagindas School in Gujarat. He then enrolled for a B.Com degree at Gujarat University.

However, he was drawn to business from childhood, so he dropped out of college after just two years, leaving his studies behind to step directly into the world of business. In other words, he is a college dropout.

After leaving college, he moved to Mumbai at a young age. On reaching Mumbai, he applied to Jai Hind College to continue his studies, but the college rejected his admission at the time. Following this, he gave up on the idea of studying further and began his career as a diamond sorter at Mahendra Brothers. Interestingly, the same college that had once rejected his admission invited him 40 years later to deliver a lecture there. The man whose admission was once turned down went on, through hard work and business acumen, to build an empire worth more than 220 billion dollars, becoming an example for the world.