Featured Image Credit: Gary Mitchell, GMP Media / Alamy / LinkedIn
Topics: Jeff Bezos, Amazon, News
Callum Jones
Topics: Jeff Bezos, Amazon, News
The founder and Executive Chairman of Amazon Jeff Bezos has regularly been amongst the world's rich list, and even held top spot for a while.
Bezos started Amazon in 1994 after quitting his job in the technology sector, managing to persuade his family and friends to invest.
It began with Bezos selling books from his garage all the way to sales hitting $386 billion in 2020.
Since stepping down from running the company in 2021, Bezos now owns 11 percent of Amazon shares, but has sold an estimated $27 billion worth of shares since 1997, according to Forbes.
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Bezos is falling down the rich list though, as a report by Bloomberg, states he has lost his title as the second-richest person on the planet recently.
That accolade now belongs to Indian entrepreneur Gautam Adani - who is the richest individual from Asia.
The Founder and Chairman of the Adani Group achieved the latter award in February when he overtook fellow Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani.
The wealthy businessman has rocketed up the rich list charts this year, having starting 2022 as the 14th richest on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
On overtaking Bezos as the second-richest individual, Adani's fortune is now worth $146.9 billion - to compare, the Amazon boss' worth is $145.8 billion.
Adani now only has Elon Musk - who is worth a staggering estimated $264 billion - to beat, however, the difference between their worth is more than the SpaceX head-honcho offered to pay for Twitter - and lets not get started on that saga!
Both Musk and Bezos are well known names across the world, however, Adani arguably does not have the same profile.
So how exactly did this wealthy Indian businessman get to where he is today?
Well the 60-year-old previously dropped out of college where he was studying commerce and became a diamond sorter in Mumbai.
He then ended up managing his brother's plastic company, and established the flagship for Adani Group, known as Adani Enterprises in 1988.
Nowadays, Adani owns the largest commercial port in India and even has a majority stake in Mumbai airport.
Adani Group - the group he founded - comprises of seven publicly traded companies, which includes businesses in coal production, infrastructure and thermal power generation.
The company has a market cap of over $258.44 billion as of this September.
On its website, the company says 'it has created a world class transport and utility infrastructure portfolio that has a pan-India presence.'
With Adani now the second-richest person in the world, here is the rest of the top ten:
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