ADANI DOUBLES DOWN ON AIRPORTS AS NAVI MUMBAI COMES ON STREAM

The conglomerate is committing fresh capital to aviation infrastructure, convinced that India’s under-penetrated air travel market has a long runway for growth

The Adani Group plans to invest ₹1 lakh crore in its airports business over the next five years, signalling a firm bet on sustained expansion in India’s aviation sector. The investment comes as commercial operations at the long-awaited Navi Mumbai International Airport prepare to begin on December 25.

“On the airport side, ₹1-lakh crore in the next five years,” Jeet Adani, Director of Adani Airports, told media agencies, underlining the group’s confidence in the sector’s trajectory. India’s aviation market, he believes, is set to grow at a steady 15–16 per cent annually for the foreseeable future.

Navi Mumbai International Airport will be the newest addition to Adani’s growing portfolio and a critical relief valve for Mumbai’s air traffic. Developed by Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd (NMIAL), in which the Adani Group holds a 74 per cent stake, the project has been built at an initial cost of ₹19,650 crore. Its first phase will handle 20 million passengers annually, with plans to scale up to 90 million over time.

That expansion, Adani said, addresses a long-standing bottleneck. “Mumbai Airport was supply constrained from 2016 onwards and wasn’t able to service the additional demand that was coming through,” he noted, adding that “with the start of Navi Mumbai Airport, we will finally see some relaxation there.”

The group acquired Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport from the GVK Group and now operates eight airports in total, including facilities at Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur and Mangaluru. The mix of metro and regional assets has positioned Adani as India’s largest private airport operator, controlling around 23 per cent of passenger traffic and roughly a third of air cargo volumes nationwide.

Growth, however, is not limited to existing assets. The group intends to be assertive in the next round of airport privatisations. “As a staunch believer, bullish believer in this industry, we would be 100 per cent very aggressive in the next round of bidding for all 11 (airports),” Adani said, referring to assets identified by the Civil Aviation Ministry for public-private partnership operations.

India’s broader aviation outlook underpins that ambition. Pointing to low per-capita air travel compared with China, Adani argued that the sector has room to multiply. “The Indian aviation industry as a whole… can continuously grow at 15–16 per cent, mid-teens, year-on-year for the next 10–15 years,” he said. Even reaching China’s current levels, he added, would require “the whole sector to grow by a multiple of cities.”

Beyond runways and terminals, the group is also laying the groundwork for adjacent businesses. Investments in maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facilities and flight simulation training centres are on the agenda, though the scale is still being finalised. “It’s a little early to say because we are still in the process of finalising a longer-term strategy,” Adani said, adding that the focus remains on building depth and expertise.

Operationally, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd (AAHL) has split its activities into two clear verticals. “We have separated the two businesses. One is the airport infrastructure and the other one is the aircraft services business,” Adani explained, with the latter spanning both civilian and defence use.

For the group, the commissioning of Navi Mumbai International Airport is more than another asset going live. “In terms of Indian aviation, this is an extremely important moment,” Adani said. “Firstly, we are seeing an asset of this size coming online and secondly, it’s not that it stops at this size. There is four times growth still left to do.”

As India’s skies get busier, Adani is positioning itself not just as a builder of infrastructure, but as a long-term architect of the country’s aviation ecosystem.

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