With metros being planed in many more cities across the country, the Adani Group wants to be ready to construct the railway stations and take up allied activities. The company has floated a separate entity for this, which will be a wholly-owned subsidiary. It’s a new venture with a capital of ₹5 lakh and a paid-up capital of ₹1 lakh.
The company has claimed in its mandatory filing with the stock exchange that this company will undertake construction for metro and mono rail projects and rapid rail transit systems. With the setting up of this subsidiary, the Adani Group is expected to bid for all the metro projects in the country that will start from hereon. It is reported that the Group participated in an investors’ summit in Uttarakhand last year and gave an assurance of making an investment of ₹5,000 crore in the state in the metro rail sector.
Interestingly, only last month, the Adani Group entered the aviation segment in the country by bagging the contracts to maintain and operate six airports viz. Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati.
As part of its ambition to expand in the airport maintenance space, the Adani Group is currently locked in a battle with the GVK Group, the operators of the prestigious Mumbai International Airport. One of GVK’s partners, Bidvest of South Africa had entered into an agreement with the Adanis to sell its 13.5% holding in the venture. But the GVK Group refused to register the shares saying it had the first right of refusal and the matter has reached the courts now.
Observers point out that not satisfied with bagging contracts for six smaller airports, the Adani Group wants to have a bigger share of the pie in a large airport like Mumbai.
With the entry into the metro rail project space, the Group would be eyeing growth in the transport infrastructure sector.