Mumbai airports acquisition will provide group with transformational platform: Gautam Adani

New Delhi [India], September 2 : Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani on Wednesday said the addition of Mumbai International Airport and the Navi Mumbai International Airport to group's existing portfolio of six airports would provide the group with a transformational platform that would help shape and create strategic adjacencies for their other business-to-business (B2B) operations.
"This acquisition helps us redesign the way we will serve our customer base and bridge our B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B business models. The Mumbai International Airport is absolutely world-class and I compliment the GVK Group for having built such an outstanding airport," Adani said in a statement.
He said, from a medium to long-term perspective, Mumbai is well on its way to become one of the top five global metropolitan centres of the 21st Century.
"It is expected to be the nation's leading airport as well as a core domestic and international hub as passenger traffic across our country grows 5-fold and India builds 200 additional airports to handle over 1 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 each require two airports and Adani Airports sees itself well-positioned to help build the infrastructure platform required," Adani said.
He further said in the present world order 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.
"Our view is that the economic value that the cities of the future create will be maximised around airports. It was Le Corbusier who had said that a city made for speed is made for success. It is airports that enable this speed and we see airports as the nucleus around which we can catalyse 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 digitization across every aspect of business and our daily lives," he said.
As India progresses towards becoming the world's third-largest economy, the Group's ability to serve this growth through a rapid build-out of airport infrastructure can be a significant enabler, Adani said.
Adani group had on August 31 said it has entered into an agreement to acquire the debt of GVK Airport Developers, paving the way to acquire 74 per cent stake in Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) that operates India's second-largest airport in Mumbai.
GVK ADL is the holding company, through which GVK Group holds 50.5 per cent equity stake in MIAL, which in turns holds 74 per cent equity stake in Navi Mumbai International Airport. According to the agreement, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd will acquire the debt of GVK ADL from its airport lenders.