Adani Group aims to handle 80 million flyers a year

The Adani Group aims for its airports to annually handle 80 million passengers once all the eight projects in its kitty, including the mega Navi Mumbai airport, are up and running.

It aims to handle another 120 million non-passengers, which would include consumers at hotels and malls in the aerotropolis areas around its airports, the group’s flagship company, Adani Enterprises Ltd, said in its annual report for fiscal 2021.

In the fiscal year ended March 31, Adani handled 8 million passengers at its airports — Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru, which it took over in October-November last year, and the Mumbai international airport in which it bought a 23.5% stake in February 2021.


Stressing on the focus on the airports business, the company said the next generation of its strategic business investments were centred on airport management, technology parks, roads, data centres and water infrastructure with a shift towards the B2C segment.

Adani Enterprises as an incubator owns 100% of its airports holding company, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd. Adani has won bids to develop six airports hitherto handled by the state-run Airports Authority of India. The concession agreements for Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru airports were signed on February 14, 2020, while those for Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram were signed on January 19 this year.

The company started running operations at Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru between October and November 2020. Commencement of operations in Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram is expected from next month.

Adani Enterprises owns 85.5% of Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru airports while Adani Airport Holdings owns the remaining 14.5%. It owns 100% of the Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Jaipur airports. Adani Airport Holdings acquired 23.5% of Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) from shareholders Bidvest and Airports Company South Africa, according to the annual report. It aims to take over 50.5% additional shares through the conversion of majority shareholder GVK’s debt into equity by the end of this month, said a person close to the development. MIAL owns 74% of the Rs 16,000 crore airport project planned in Navi Mumbai.

The government has “set a target to commission 190-200 operational airports by FY40. There is a possibility of the creation of water aerodromes. In August 2020, 78 new routes were approved by the government under UDAN 4.0 to induce connectivity to remote and isolated areas of the country,” the company said, emphasising on the opportunities in the airport sector in its report.

The conglomerate also has considerable plans for the defence aviation sector.

“As per estimates, the projected size of the Indian aircraft services market is $145 billion till 2037. The company is working towards providing a one-stop solution for all aircraft-related services across India and South Asia. The company intends to address multiple opportunities like aircraft maintenance, overhaul-cum-repair, component services, training, simulators, digital solutions and airport services across India and South Asia,” it said.

Last year, Adani Defence signed an agreement with Airbus to collaborate on aircraft maintenance, component repair, training and digital solutions.

In March 2021, it conducted what was claimed to be the first live demonstration of a counter-drone system at the Ahmedabad airport. It also won three contracts for the operations and maintenance of training simulators for Mi17 helicopters and MiG29 aircraft for the Indian Air Force on a build-operate-maintain basis for 20 years.