Gautam Adani Says Mumbai Airport Acquisition A Boost To His Group Firms
“This acquisition helps us redesign the way we will serve our customer base and bridge our B2C and B2B business models,” he says.
The acquisition of Mumbai airport will help Adani Group expand its existing portfolio of six airports and create “strategic adjacencies” for its other businesses, Gautam Adani said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This acquisition helps us redesign the way we will serve our customer base and bridge our B2C and B2B business models,” the billionaire chairman of the group said.
Adani Airports, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd. had on Monday announced the acquisition of GVK Airport Developers Ltd.’s 50.50% stake in Mumbai International Airport Ltd. It will also buyout 23.5% stake of Airports Company of South Africa and Bidvest Group to get a 74% controlling interest in MIAL.
Now, including the six non-metro airports that were acquired previously, Adani Group has become the largest private airports operator in India. The Ahmedabad-based firm will also contrl the upcoming Navi Mumbai airport as MIAL holds 74% stake in it.
According to Adani, Mumbai is set to become one of the Top 5 metropolitan centres of the world in the 21st century. The city is expected to be India’s leading airport as well as a core domestic and international hub.
This, when air passenger traffic across India is projected to grow fivefold by 2040, even as the nation builds 200 new airports to handle over one billion passengers across the Tier I, II and III cities, the 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 as well-positioned to help build the infrastructure platform required,” Adani said in the statement.
After seaports, Adani Group is betting big on the airports sector and has won the bids to run six government-built non-metro airports in Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram. “Adani Airports will operate, manage and develop all these six airports for a period of 50 years,” the chairman said.
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“It was Le Corbusier who had said that a city made for speed is made for success,” Adani said. “It is airports that enable this speed...”
“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,” he said.