Adani group to invest $150 bn in pursuit of $1 trillion valuation

The group's market capitalisation was around $16 billion in 2015 and it is $260 billion in 2022 - a surge of over 16x in seven years

Richest Asian Gautam Adani's group will invest over $150 billion across businesses ranging from green energy to data centres to airports and healthcare as it chases the dream to join the elite global club of companies with $1 trillion valuations.

On October 10, Adani Group Chief Financial Officer Jugeshinder 'Robbie' Singh detailed the growth plans of the group, which started off as a trader in 1988 and expanded rapidly into ports, airports, roads, power, renewable energy, power transmission, gas distribution and FMCG and more recently into data centres, airports, petrochemicals, cement and media, at an investor meet organised by Ventura Securities Ltd in New Delhi.

The group plans to invest $50-70 billion in green hydrogen business and another $23 billion in green energy over the next 5-10 years, Mr, Singh said. It will invest $7 billion in electricity transmission, $12 billion in transport utility and $5 billion in the road sector.

Its foray into data centre business with cloud services would entail an investment of $6.5 billion in partnership with Edge ConneX and another $9-10 billion is planned for airports, where it is already the largest private operator. Its foray into the cement sector with the acquisition of ACC and Ambuja cement entailed $10 billion investment.

It is foraying into the petrochemical business with plans to set up a 1 million tonnes per annum PVC manufacturing facility at an investment of $2 billion and would enter the copper sector with a 0.5 million tonnes a year smelter at an investment of $1 billion, he added.

The healthcare sector foray that will include insurance, hospitals and diagnostic and pharma would see an investment of $7-10 billion, with some coming from Adani Foundation.

"Whatever you see today, it might look like it has just happened in the last one or two years, but in reality what we have done, both Gautam Shantilal Adani and myself discussed this in 2015," Mr. Singh said at the investor meeting adding the conglomerate is a result of a well-thought-out business plan that entailed foraying into adjacencies of existing business.