ISometime in 2017, Nathan Anderson wondered if it was really worth it. Anderson, known to everyone as Nate, sat in his small two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, New York, at a loss as to how to pay his bills. His fiancée was pregnant, his small business was not doing well and now this: his landlord wanted to evict him.
A life situation that Gautam Adani probably never experienced in faraway India. The boss of the energy and infrastructure group Adani, one of the richest people in the world, has never really lacked for anything. Although Adani wasn’t born rich, he has worked his way up to become one of the most important Indian industrialists. But the Indian (current estimated fortune: around 60 billion dollars) will not have seen the inside of two-room apartments for a long time. And yet there is a connection between the Indian Adani and the American Anderson that sounds almost made up: Nate Anderson, this inconspicuous and not exactly fortunate New Yorker, became Adani’s destiny in those early February days.