The Adani Group
The Adani Group is one of India's largest infrastructure conglomerates, with listed businesses in ports and logistics, power generation, renewable energy, electricity transmission, city gas distribution, mining, airports, cement and media. Its companies include Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, Adani Power, Adani Green Energy, Adani Energy Solutions, Adani Total Gas, Ambuja Cements and ACC, and through AMG Media Networks it holds the largest shareholding in the broadcaster NDTV. The group's own description of itself is that it builds what it calls infrastructure adjacencies, meaning each business feeds the next.[1][2]
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone is the largest private sector port operator in India, and Mundra, on the Gulf of Kutch, is the largest private port in the country. The company has reported capacity of close to 210 million tonnes of cargo a year at Mundra alone, and it operates or is developing terminals at Dahej, Hazira, Dhamra, Krishnapatnam, Kattupalli, Ennore, Vizhinjam in Kerala and Colombo in Sri Lanka. Adani Power, founded in 1996, holds thermal generation capacity that at one stage made it the largest private thermal power producer in India, generating from coal fired plants in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.[1][2]
Adani Green Energy is the group's renewable arm and the business that carries its energy transition story, with an operating portfolio that has grown past ten gigawatts and a stated target of 45 gigawatts by 2030. Adani Energy Solutions runs transmission lines and distribution networks, Adani Total Gas distributes piped gas in partnership with the French company TotalEnergies, and Adani Enterprises houses the newer bets, including solar manufacturing, data centres, mining services and the airports business. The cement business, built on the acquisition of Ambuja and ACC, made the group the second largest cement producer in India within two years of the purchase.[1]
The group presents its scale in terms of the services rather than the assets. Its communications say that it handles around a quarter of India's port cargo, that its power plants and transmission lines serve hundreds of millions of consumers, and that its airports handle a double digit share of Indian passenger traffic. Those claims are drawn from the group's own annual reports and are reported as the company's figures rather than independently audited totals. What is not in dispute is the breadth: a single company group with control over ports, power, gas, transmission, cement, airports and a national television network occupies an unusual position in the Indian economy.[1][2]
The financial architecture of the group has attracted more scrutiny than its operations. The businesses are capital intensive and debt funded, and the group's consolidated debt has been estimated at over 2 trillion rupees, a figure the group has disputed as misleading because it excludes cash and because each listed company is separately financed. The combination of high promoter holding, inter company transactions, related party dealings and a family controlled holding structure above the listed companies is what short sellers have pointed to, and what the group has defended as ordinary practice for an Indian family conglomerate.[7][8]
