NE BUSINESS BUREAU
NEW DELHI, SEPT 28
A rupee invested in Adani Enterprises two-and-a-half decades back has given over 800-times return, billionaire Gautam Adani said as he saw his infrastructure conglomerate evolve into an integrated ”platform of platforms”.
Speaking at the JP Morgan India Summit – Future in Focus, the Adani Group chairman said the seaports-to-airports-to-energy group’s incubation model has created six publicly-traded companies with thousands of jobs and unprecedented shareholder value.
“A one-rupee investment in Adani Enterprises (at the time of) our first IPO in 1994 has returned over 800x,” he said.
A college dropout, Adani, 58, started with trading in commodities and went on to build a conglomerate that is the country’s biggest sea-port operator and is poised to be India’s largest private airport developer. It has interests spanning energy, mining, gas, renewables, defence and agro-commodities.
“We basically build infrastructure that enables ”flow” – the flow of goods and materials, the flow of electrons, the flow of people, and the flow of data. This focus on helping build India”s infrastructure forms the core of our philosophy,” he said.
The vision to build India, he said, enabled Adani Group to enter sectors facing critical demand gaps and growth through expansion into adjacent sectors.
Its incubation model of nurturing new businesses within the flagship company, Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) led to the creation of six publicly-traded companies that created thousands of jobs and delivered unprecedented value to its shareholders, he said.
From emerging as a market leader across its various businesses of thermal power, renewables, ports and logistics and gas distribution to foraying into new sectors aligned to new India’s needs such as airports, aerospace and defence and data centres, Adani said that his group has built India’s largest infrastructure business.
The infrastructure business “is now manifesting itself as an integrated ”platform of platforms”,” he said. “This platform helps us bridge the B2B to B2C gap in unique ways and provide to India its largest physical ”infrastructure as a service’ platform.”
He said the Adani Group’s journey over the past two decades has been one of continuous transition – from one business to linked businesses while maintaining a 10-year CAGR growth of 35 percent.
