Billionaire Gautam Adani is planning to invest more than $4 billion in a petrochemical complex in the state of Gujarat, he said in an interview with the Financial Times on Friday.
Adani, Asia's richest person, plans to launch a "super app" in the next three to six months to connect Adani airport passengers with other Adani Group services, according to the report.
Adani denied that moving into petrochemicals would open up serious competition with fellow billionaire Mukesh Ambani. “There is no competition," he said. “India is a huge growth market and everybody is welcome."
The board of the flagship company, Adani Enterprises Ltd., is meeting today to discuss fund raising options.
Adani’s potential move mirrors a push by fellow Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who raised more than $27 billion in 2020 from global investors by selling stakes in units of his conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd.
India is set to become a $30 trillion economy by 2050 -- a nearly 10-fold jump from its current size -- driven by rising consumption and social and economic reforms, according Gautam Adani.
The nation’s gross domestic product may start expanding by $1 trillion every 12 to 18 months within the next decade, increasing its attraction as an investment destination, the billionaire said at a recent conference in Mumbai. India’s share of global GDP is likely to exceed 20% by 2050, he said.
The coal-to-ports billionaire reaffirmed his group’s commitment to invest $70 billion in a clean energy value chain. Economic growth will likely mean India’s energy consumption will rise by 400% by 2050, and the country will undertake “an unparalleled" energy transition to cater for this demand, he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has set targets to expand the nation’s solar and wind power capacity, as well as make the country a global hub for green hydrogen.
The world’s third-biggest producer of greenhouse gases has set a goal to become a net zero emitter by 2070, and business tycoons including Adani and his rival Mukesh Ambani are spearheading that effort, committing billions of dollars in green energy.
Adani said India is expected to maintain its rapid pace of creating unicorns, start-ups that have more than a billion dollars in market value. In 2021, India added a unicorn every nine days, he said.
