Airport foray to lead in aviation infra creation, says Gautam Adani

The acquisition of the Mumbai International Airport and the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport, along with six airports already bagged for the development, will make Adani Airports, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, a leading enabler in developing an aviation infrastructure for the country, said Gautam Adani, chairman, Adani Group.

He said Mumbai is expected to be the nation's leading airport as well as a core domestic and international hub in the 21st century, as passenger traffic across the country grows five-fold and builds 200 additional airports to handle over one 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 require two airports each, said Gautam Adani, commenting on the acquisition.

ALSO READ: Why Adani Group's buyout of Mumbai Airport is surprising?

On Monday, Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL) bought the debt of GVK Airport Developers, which holds 50.50 per cent equity stake in Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), which in turn holds 74 per cent equity stake in the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd (NMIAL). Adani Airports has already got the mandate to modernise and operate six airports - at Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram for a period of 50 years from the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

"Airports are what enable this speed and we see them as the nucleus around which we can catalyze 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.

ALSO READ: Adani group to acquire GVK ADL's debt; gets controlling stake in Mumbai airport

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. The economic value that the cities of the future create will be maximised around airports. "As our nation progresses towards becoming the world's third-largest economy, the Adani Group's ability to serve this growth through a rapid build-out of airport infrastructure can be a significant enabler and 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.

ALSO READ: Govt shouldn't be running airports, airlines; hope to privatise Air India in 2020: Hardeep Singh Puri