Airports platform will create strategic benefits for the group: Gautam Adani

From a medium to long-term perspective, Mumbai is well on its way to become one of the top five global metropolitan centres of 21st century. Adani said Mumbai airport is expected to be the nation’s leading airport as well as a core domestic and international hub as passenger traffic five-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," the statement said.

Airports are the "nucleus around which we can catalyse 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 digitisation across every aspect of business and our daily lives," he said.

"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 maximised around airports."

Adani Airports is a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, the flagship company, and Adani conglomerate. The company has won the mandate to modernise and operate six airports in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram. Adani Airports will operate, manage and develop these over a period of 50 years.

On Monday, the group said it has entered into a definitive pact to buy the debt of GVK Airport Developers Ltd, the current majority owners of Mumbai International Airport, against which a 50.5% stake in airport Ltd has been pledged.

Adani group will also buy the combined 23.5% stake held by Airport Company of South Africa (Acsa) and South Africa’s Bidvest group in MIAL, for which it has obtained the approval of the Competition Commission of India. This would give the group a 74% stake in MIAL. The remaining 26% stake would be held by state-run Airports Authority of India.