Gautam Adani-led Adani Group, which recently forayed into petrochemical and airport spaces, is continuing with aggressive expansions, with a focus on new business areas like logistics, mining, energy, construction and agro commodities, in order to diversify its portfolio, which has paid rich dividends to the company in the last few years.
Sources close to the company said it is aggressively bidding for projects in logistics, mining, energy, construction and defence in next few months.
In January this year, Adani Group forayed into the petrochemicals sector, after signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with German chemicals major BASF SE, to evaluate a joint investment in the acrylics value chain entailing an investment of two billion euros (about Rs 16,000 crore). The proposed site for the facility is at Mundra port in Gujarat and a feasibility study will be completed by the end of 2019.
In February, the group forayed into the airport space as it bagged the rights to operate, manage and develop half-a-dozen airports in the country, namely Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangalore, over the next 50 years.
“With these six airports under concession, the Adanis will become the third largest private airport operator in terms of passengers handled, after the GMR group and GVK group,” ratings agency ICRA said in a note.
City Gas is another area the company is betting on. In the ninth city gas bid in November last year, Adani Gas bagged licence to retail Compressed Natural Gas to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in 13 cities and towns. In the same round, it also won the licence for another nine geographical areas in a joint venture with state-owned Indian Oil Corporation.
Further, in the tenth bid round concluded last month, it bagged rights to two geographical areas in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.The group, which is already active in construction space, also bid for redevelopment of Dharavi slum in Mumbai, one of the most ambitious slum redevelopment projects in the country. The company has already expressed its plans to actively engage in the construction business.
Adani Enterprises said on Saturday that its subsidiary Adani Defence Systems and Technologies has acquired Alpha Design Technologies. “Adani Defence Systems and Technologies — a wholly owned subsidiary of the firm — has acquired the control of Alpha Design Technologies,” Adani Enterprises said in a BSE filing. (With PTI inputs)