India’s Adani group aiming for $1-trillion valuation

BY S VENKAT NARAYAN
Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, November 5: Indian tycoon Gautam Adani’s business conglomerate is chasing the dream to join the elite global club of companies with $1-trillion valuations. It will invest over $150 billion across businesses ranging from green energy to data centres to airports and healthcare. At present, there are only five companies in the world whose market value is more than $1 trillion each. And they all are American: Apple Inc ($2.87 trillion), Microsoft Corp ($2.51 trillion), Alphabet Inc ($1.97 trillion), Amazon.com Inc ($1.79 trillion), and Tesla Inc ($1.07 trillion). And Microsoft and Alphabet are headed by Indian-origin Americans: Satya Nadella and Sunder Pichai.

Last month, Adani Group Chief Financial Officer Jugeshinder ‘Robbie’ Singh detailed the growth plans of the group at an investor meet organised by Ventura Securities Ltd in New Delhi. Starting off as a trader in 1988, it has expanded rapidly into ports, airports, roads, power, renewable energy, power transmission, gas distribution and FMCG and, more recently, into data centres, airports, petrochemicals, cement and media,

The group plans to invest $50-70 billion in green hydrogen business and another $23 billion in green energy over the next 5-10 years, Singh said. It will invest $7 billion in electricity transmission, $12 billion in transport utility and $5 billion in the road sector.

Its foray into data centre business with cloud services would entail an investment of $6.5 billion in partnership with Edge ConneX. Another $9-10 billion is planned for airports, where it is already the largest private operator. Its entry into the cement sector with the acquisition of ACC and Ambuja Cement entailed an investment of $10 billion. It is getting into the petrochemical business with plans to set up a one-million tonne per annum PVC manufacturing facility with an investment of $2 billion, and will enter the copper sector with a 0.5 million tonnes a year smelter at an investment of $1 billion, Singh said.

The healthcare sector thrust that will include insurance, hospitals and diagnostic and pharma will see an investment of $7-10 billion, with some of it coming from the Adani Foundation.

“Whatever you see today, it might look like it has just happened in the last one or two years. But, in reality, both GSA (Gautam Shantilal Adani) and myself discussed this in 2015,” Singh said at the investor meeting. The conglomerate is the result of a well-thought-out business plan that entailed going into adjacencies of existing business.The group’s market capitalisation was around $16 billion in 2015 and it is $260 billion in 2022: a surge of over 16 times in seven years.