AHMEDABAD: Operating seven airports in India, including Mumbai CSMIA with Navi Mumbai set to join the list this Oct, the Adani group will invest close to Rs 1 lakh crore in its airport business over the next five years. This capex will be spread over both infra and real estate development. The conglomerate’s airport head Jeet Adani (27), son of patriarch Gautam Adani, says the potential in India is so immense that it has no immediate plans to expand this vertical of business abroad. Excerpts:What are your investment plans for the sector?We do five-year rolling planning. In the next five years, our total investment planned in the airports ecosystem between infrastructure and real estate is almost Rs 95,000-96,000 crore. The biggest chunk of the capex will be at Navi Mumbai Airport, Mumbai Airport and real estate in these two places.The other big projects are to build new terminals at airports in places like Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram in next four years. The recently-built terminal in Lucknow will be expanded. A new terminal at Guwahati is ready and will be commissioned this Oct-Nov.Do you have any plans to build and operate airports abroad too?Not immediately. We see too much opportunity in India and don’t want to distract ourselves by going abroad. We keep getting feelers from abroad. But at the end of the day, it’s about our management bandwidth and where do we want to keep our capital. We believe India will see some serious growth in the next 10-15 years. There’s so much growth opportunity here with 26 airports already identified for being developed PPP way. Our focus is on going deeper in India and establishing a broader presence here, rather than going abroad.
Jeet Adani
What is the investment that the upcoming Navi Mumbai will see?We clubbed phase I and II of that airport and will open with an initial capacity of 2 crore passengers annually (CPA) instead of building 1 CPA at a time. This has been built with a capex of Rs 19,000 crore. We have already started work on T2 for Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) which could either be 3-CPA capacity at Rs 30,000 crore or 5-CPA capacity with a capex of Rs 40-45,000 crore.That decision will be taken shortly and T2 construction work will start in 6-12 months. Our overall capex on NMIA that will take it to the ultimate capacity of 9 CPA will be Rs 1 lakh crore. A completely new T1 at Mumbai CSMIA will be built by 2032 at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore.How do you plan to fund this capex?Equity we will put on our own. We have to refinance NMIA. The same lenders have already expressed willingness to participate in the next round. Our philosophy is to pre-invest in infra because we are willing to take a position on the growth of the aviation sector and growth of the economy of the cities we are in. The sector has some real tailwinds.What makes you so bullish on aviation, given the not so happy relation between airlines and airports here in the past?We are not here just as an airport operator but are here to drive the entire ecosystem forward. It is not a fight between airline and airport operators. Collectively, our aviation ecosystem has to get the traffic currently transiting between India and rest of the world through nearby hubs in the Gulf, Southeast Asia and even Europe (for North America market). Those places have a deep integration between airports and airlines, which as of now is not there in India. Fortunately as a group, we have fantastic relationship with IndiGo and the Tatas. We have spoken to both and have asked them to include us into their planning and be a part of our planning.
