Brilliant diversifier

Savvy strategies have turned the Adani Group into a Rs 27,000 crore conglomerate.

Forty-seven-year old Gautam Adani is the chairman of the Rs 27,000 crore Ahmedabad-based Adani Group, which has business interests ranging from energy to infrastructure and commodities. It comprises three listed companies — Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Power Ltd and Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone Ltd — whose combined market capitalisation places the Adani group among India’s top 10 business houses.

The flagship company, Adani Enterprises Ltd., has been rated among the 50 top performing Asian Companies by Forbes magazine, which also adjudged Gautam Adani the 10th richest Indian in November 2009.

Born in a family of oilseed traders in Ahmedabad, Gautam Adani moved to Mumbai after matriculating, to explore opportunities and for higher studies. Staying in Mumbai with a cousin who was a trader enabled him to learn trading. In 1980, his family required his presence in Ahmedabad, and this proved to be a turning point in his life.

He was forced to quit college and manage a small plastic manufacturing unit. Faced with acute scarcity of raw materials, Gautam persuaded government organisations that were exporting large number of products across the world to import the much-needed raw material, and the raw material supply constraint eased.

By 1985 Gautam Adani had mastered international trade. He deployed his trading and entrepreneurial skills by forming a partnership firm and got into trading in a big way, exporting commodities that were abundant in India and importing those that were scarce. After that there was no looking back. Adani Enterprises Ltd., the group’s flagship company, which was incorporated over two decades ago and listed on the stock exchanges in 1992, today has varied business interests ranging from energy to infrastructure and commodities.

Adani has the knack of identifying opportunities and doggedly pursuing them to their logical end. A derailed proposed joint venture with Cargill of the US, set up during the mid-nineties for salt farming and export through a captive jetty in Kutch, is today’s Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone, duly connected by rail, road and pipelines. Adani has invariably aligned his business development plans with the country’s needs. He has operationalised Gujarat’s port development policy and the Central government’s SEZ policy in Mundra.

This sleepy town, known only for its date palms until a decade back, is one of the most efficient ports in India, handling close to 40 million tonnes of cargo today. This is likely to cross 100 million tonnes on the commissioning of the world’s largest coal import terminal. The group has also set up a private railway line from Mundra to Adipur, has inland container depots and operates container trains across India to provide comprehensive logistics solutions to customers. Mundra is also set to become India’s largest multiproduct SEZ, with an area of almost 100 sq km, and will generate employment opportunities for over four lakh persons.

Adani has also forayed into power generation and power transmission in a big way.