Adani Making The Right Moves To Be India's next Ambani

New Delhi: Building a business empire for two decades centered on coal, Indian Billionaire Gautam Adani now is looking beyond fossil fuel and into other avenues to secure his group's future in the business world. 

Adani is revered as India’s infrastructure king. Adani's plans have also got Prime Minister Narendra Modi's backing. Diversifying mines, ports, and power plants into airports, data centers, and defense sectors which are considered crucial to meeting India’s economic goals, has helped Adani get the centre's support. 

The investors are lauding his new business moves as they were waiting with bated breath to invest in such a diversified plan. Investors predict that Adani's strategy of aligning his interests with that of the government's development programs will soon pay off. They are happy that Adani is moving in the right direction. 

The Adani group’s six listed units added a combined $79 billion to their market value in the past year at the height of a pandemic, capping the best 12 months in their history making it one of the top two biggest business empires in the country, Tata group and Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd. Blue-chip names including French oil giant Total SE and Warburg Pincus LLC have plowed money into Adani’s group of companies.

In less than two years, Adani has gained control of seven airports and almost a quarter of India’s air traffic. He has unveiled plans to boost his renewable energy capacity almost eightfold by 2025, positioning himself to benefit as the government debates ambitious climate targets that would cut net greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. 

Last week, he won a contract to co-develop a port terminal in Sri Lanka, a neighbor India is looking to check China’s influence in the region. Adani Enterprises Ltd. also signed a pact last month with EdgeConneX to develop and operate data centers across India.

Adani’s new ventures face far fewer roadblocks. He has plans for defense manufacturing, heeding Modi’s calls to help cut reliance on expensive imports. He is also scaling up the production of solar panels and modules, again under Modi’s “Make in India” appeal. The foray into data centers follows the government’s proposed law that requires data to be stored locally.

However, we are yet to see the real game yet. Right now the tide is in the favor of Adani, and he is likely to soar to new heights if all goes well.