Media Statement by Mr. Gautam Adani Chairman, Adani Group
The Mumbai International Airport is absolutely world-class and I compliment the GVK Group for having built such an outstanding airport.
The addition of the Mumbai International Airport and the Navi Mumbai International Airport to our existing portfolio of 6 airports provides us a transformational platform that will help shape and create strategic adjacencies for our other B2B businesses. This acquisition helps us redesign the way we will serve our customer base and bridge our B2C and B2B business models.
From a medium to long-term perspective, Mumbai is well on its way to become one of the top 5 global metropolitan centers of the 21st century. It is expected to be the nation’s leading airport as well as a core domestic and international hub as passenger traffic across our country grows 5-fold and India builds 200 additional airports to handle over 1 billion domestic and international passengers across the Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities, majority of which will connect to Mumbai. Over this period, India’s top 30 cities are expected to each require two airports and Adani Airports sees itself well-positioned to help build the infrastructure platform required.
It was Le Corbusier who had said that a city made for speed is made for success. It is airports that enable this speed and we see airports as the nucleus around which we can catalyze real-estate and entertainment facilities, e-commerce and logistics capabilities, time-sensitive industrial ecosystems, aviation-linked business and put in place other innovative business concepts – many of which will be enabled as a result of the mainstreaming of digitization across every aspect of business and our daily lives. In fact, we live in a world where airports have increasingly come to define the character of a city and become a critical factor for the choice of a business location, tourism, urban economic growth and global economic integration. Our view is that the economic value that the cities of the future create will be maximized around airports.
As our nation progresses towards becoming the world’s third-largest economy, the Adani Group’s ability to serve this growth through a rapid build-out of airport infrastructure can be a significant enabler. We therefore see airports as a powerful engine to drive local economic development as well as act as a critical lever to help converge the tier 1 cities with the tier 2 and tier 3 cities in a hub and spoke model. This hub and spoke model is fundamental to enable a greater equalization of our increasing urban – rural divide as well as take advantage of the cost arbitrage that exists between the different locations to make us more competitive as a nation. This is critical for the creation of net new jobs.
Given our deep infrastructure expertise, we are well-positioned to help make this happen.
About Adani Airports
Adani Airports, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, the Flagship Company and in-house incubator of the Adani Group, won the mandate to modernize and operate six airports such as Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram through a globally competitive tendering process conducted by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Subsequently, Adani Airports received the Letter of Award (LoA) for three airports – Ahmedabad, Lucknow & Mangaluru. On February 14, 2020, the company signed the Concession Agreement (CA) for all the three airports i.e. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport (Ahmedabad), Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport (Lucknow) & Mangaluru International Airport (Mangaluru). Adani Airports will operate, manage & develop all these six airports for a period of 50 years.
About the Adani Group
The Adani Group is an integrated industrial conglomerate operating globally with six publicly traded companies with total revenues of $15 billion and a market capitalization of ~$30 billion. It has created world class transport and utility infrastructure portfolios with a pan-India presence. Adani Group is headquartered in Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, India. Over the years, Adani Group has positioned itself to be the market leader in its transport logistics and energy utility portfolio businesses focusing on large scale infrastructure development in India with O & M practices benchmarked to global standards. With four IG rated businesses it is the only Infrastructure Investment Grade issuer in India. Adani owes its success and leadership position to its core philosophy of ‘Nation Building’ driven by ‘Growth with Goodness’ – a guiding principle for sustainable growth. Adani is committed to increase its ESG footprint by realigning its businesses with emphasis on climate protection and increasing community outreach through its CSR program based on the principles of sustainability, diversity and shared values.