Adani Group

Timeline

1. 1988Adani Exports is founded in Ahmedabad as a commodity trading partnership with capital of about five lakh rupees.The flagship is later renamed Adani Enterprises.
2. 1990The group builds its own jetty at Mundra on the Gulf of Kutch to give its trading business a base.
3. 1995Construction begins at Mundra after the group wins the contract to operate the port.
4. 1998It becomes the top net foreign exchange earner among Indian companies.
5. 1999Coal trading begins, the business that eventually supplies the majority of group revenue.
6. 2000Adani Wilmar is formed as a joint venture with Wilmar International for edible oil refining.
7. 2002Mundra handles about four million tonnes of cargo and becomes the largest private port in India.
8. 2006The group becomes India's largest coal importer, handling about eleven million tonnes.
9. 2008It buys the Bunyu mine in Indonesia, with about 180 million tonnes of coal reserves.
10. 2009Thermal power generation starts at 330 MW, and edible oil refining capacity reaches 2.2 million tonnes a year.
11. 2010Adani Enterprises wins the Orissa mine rights and the group becomes India's largest private coal mining company.
12. 2011Abbot Point port in Australia is bought, and India's largest solar plant of the time, at 40 MW, is commissioned.
13. 2012The group reshapes itself around three clusters, resources, logistics and energy, and unveils a new identity and logo.The rebranding was announced in February 2012.
14. 2014Adani Power becomes India's largest private power producer with 9,280 MW installed, and Dhamra Port is bought for 5,500 crore rupees.
15. 2015A 10,000 MW solar park joint venture is signed with the Rajasthan government, and construction starts at Vizhinjam in Kerala.
16. 2016Adani Defence signs a pact with Elbit and Alpha Design Technologies on unmanned aircraft, and the 648 MW Kamuthi solar plant opens in Tamil Nadu.
17. 2017The group buys the Mumbai power business of Reliance Infrastructure for 18,800 crore rupees.
18. 2019TotalEnergies buys 37.4 per cent of Adani Gas for 6,155 crore rupees, and the Carmichael coal project in Queensland gets its final approvals.
19. 2020Total puts a further 510 million dollars into an Adani Green Energy subsidiary, and the group takes majority control of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports.
20. 2021Adani Green Energy agrees to buy SB Energy, the SoftBank and Bharti joint venture, for 3.5 billion dollars, and raises its ownership of the Mumbai airport operator to 74 per cent.
21. 2022Ambuja Cements and ACC are acquired for 10.5 billion dollars, Abu Dhabi's IHC invests 15,400 crore rupees in three group firms, and a stake in NDTV is bought.
22. 2023Hindenburg Research publishes its report and more than 104 billion dollars of market value is lost in a few weeks.The group called the report a calculated attack and published a 413 page reply.
23. 2024Federal prosecutors in New York charge Gautam Adani and associates over an alleged bribery scheme, Kenya cancels two contracts, and group market value returns above 200 billion dollars in May.
24. 2025Indian authorities begin proceedings to serve a United States SEC summons on Gautam Adani, and the group contests the case.
25. 2026Group shares fall about ten per cent, a loss of roughly 12.5 billion dollars, after the SEC asks an Indian court to issue email summons to the defendants in the bribery case.

What it does

The Adani Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Ahmedabad. Its businesses run across port and airport management, electricity generation and transmission, mining, natural gas, food processing, defence equipment and infrastructure, and it is the largest private operator of ports in the country. It was founded by Gautam Adani in 1988 as a commodity trading business, and he remains chairman of the group he built.^[1]

More than 60 per cent of group revenue has come from coal related businesses, which means mining, imports, shipping, port handling and the power plants that burn the fuel are one connected chain rather than separate bets. That concentration has been the engine of the group's growth and the source of most of its political and environmental risk, because a business of that shape depends on coal demand, on import rules and on the terms of long term fuel contracts.^[1]

The listed group is easier to describe as a set of companies than as one business. Adani Enterprises is the flagship and the incubator. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone runs ports and logistics. Adani Power and Adani Energy Solutions cover generation and transmission. Adani Green Energy is the renewable arm and Adani Total Gas the city gas arm. Ambuja Cements and ACC are the cement business, Adani Defence and Aerospace the defence business, and NDTV with the news agency IANS sits in media.^[1]

What ties the companies together is the way they are funded and built. Most of the group's assets were constructed rather than bought, so its growth shows up as capital expenditure and as debt raised against those assets, and the family holding structure above the listed companies decides where the next round of capital goes. That is why the group's quarterly numbers matter less to lenders than its leverage, its project pipeline and its access to international bond markets.^[1]

History

Adani Exports Limited started as a commodity trading company in 1988, importing and exporting a range of goods through a partnership firm with capital of about five lakh rupees. The company that is now Adani Enterprises was the trading desk of the group for its first decade, and India's liberalisation in 1991 turned that trading desk into a business with reach across metals, textiles and agricultural commodities.^[1]

The port came first as a convenience and became the group's centre of gravity. In 1990 the group developed its own jetty at Mundra to serve its trading operations, construction at the site began in 1995, and by 1998 the group was the top net foreign exchange earner among Indian companies. Coal trading began in 1999, edible oil refining followed in 2000 with the Adani Wilmar joint venture, and by 2002 Mundra was handling about four million tonnes of cargo as the largest private port in India. In 2006 it was the largest coal importer in the country, handling about eleven million tonnes.^[1]

The group went overseas for resources in 2008, buying the Bunyu mine in Indonesia with about 180 million tonnes of coal reserves, and added thermal power in 2009 at 330 MW while edible oil refining capacity reached 2.2 million tonnes a year. In 2010 Adani Enterprises won mine rights in Orissa and the group became the largest private coal mining company in India. Abbot Point port in Australia and a 40 MW solar plant followed in 2011, the year the firm crossed 3,960 MW of generation capacity and became the largest private sector thermal power producer in the country.^[1]

In 2012 the group repositioned itself around three clusters, resources, logistics and energy, and unveiled a new identity and logo. Adani Power became India's largest private power producer in 2014 with 9,280 MW installed, and in the same year Adani Ports bought Dhamra Port on the east coast from its Tata Steel and L and T joint venture owners for 5,500 crore rupees. The group also signed a 10,000 MW solar park joint venture with the Rajasthan government in 2015 and began construction at Vizhinjam in Kerala.^[4][6][5]

The later years were about assembling a consumer and infrastructure group around the original energy business: the Mumbai power business of Reliance Infrastructure in 2017 for 18,800 crore rupees, the TotalEnergies entry into Adani Gas in 2019, majority control of the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports in 2020, the SB Energy acquisition in 2021, and Ambuja Cements and ACC in 2022. Each deal moved the group further from trading and closer to owning the infrastructure of Indian daily life.^{[7][10][9][12]}

Founders and leadership

Gautam Adani, born in Ahmedabad in 1962, is the founder and chairman and remains the public face of every part of the group. He left school at sixteen, worked as a diamond sorter in Mumbai and returned to run his brother's plastics unit in Ahmedabad before starting the export business that became the group. Investors treat his presence as the group's main asset and its main risk, because strategy, capital allocation and political access all run through him.^[1]

The next generation is already in operating roles. Karan Adani, his son, is managing director of Adani Ports and has run the ports and logistics business since 2016, while Jeet Adani is a director at Adani Airports and oversees the group's airport and defence interests. Pranav Adani, a nephew, leads the group's agro and edible oil businesses, and Vinod Adani, the founder's brother, has been named in reporting about offshore entities that invested in group companies.^[1]

Below the family sits a professional bench built over a decade: a group chief financial officer, separate chief executives for the ports, power, transmission, green energy, gas, cement, airports and defence companies, and a corporate centre in Ahmedabad that approves capital expenditure. The company has said it has strengthened disclosure and internal audit since the Hindenburg report, adding reviews of related party transactions that the report had questioned.^[1]

Priti Adani, the founder's wife, chairs the Adani Foundation, which runs the group's education, health and skill development programmes. Adani University in Ahmedabad and the Adani Foundation are the group's formal social presence, and the foundation is the body through which the group responds to criticism about the communities around its mines, ports and plants.^[1]

Mundra and the ports business

Mundra is the reason the Adani Group exists in its present form. The port sits on the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat, began operations in the late 1990s and grew into the largest commercial port in India by cargo handled, with the group's special economic zone, power plants and terminals clustered around it. Because the group both runs the port and trades the coal, container and liquid cargo that passes through it, Mundra gives it a share of the margin at several points in the same journey.^[1]

The group's port company has grown by buying terminals rather than waiting for greenfield projects. Dhamra Port on the east coast was acquired in 2014 for 5,500 crore rupees from a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Steel and L and T Infrastructure Development Projects, and the port had handled about 14.3 million tonnes of cargo in the year to March 2014. With Dhamra in hand the group said it was planning to take its capacity past 200 million tonnes. Krishnapatnam, Gangavaram, Vizhinjam and a terminal at Haifa in Israel were added in the years after, and the company now describes itself as a ports and logistics business rather than a port operator.^[5][1][3]

Vizhinjam in Kerala is the group's most ambitious port bet, a deep water transshipment terminal begun in November 2015 that is meant to take cargo that currently moves through Colombo and Singapore. The project took years longer than planned and ran into local protest over breakwater and fishing concerns, but it received its first container vessel in 2024 and is central to the group's argument that Indian cargo should not need a foreign hub.^[1]

Logistics was built on the back of the ports: rail rakes, container trains, warehouses, agri silos and last mile trucking. The logic is that a port is worth more when the group also moves the cargo inland, and the same logic drove the acquisitions of terminals and the railway sidings that serve its power plants and mines.^[1]

Power, coal and the energy chain

Adani Power is the group's largest industrial business by output. It became India's largest private power producer in 2014, when its installed capacity stood at 9,280 MW, and grew from there with plants at Mundra, Tiroda, Kawai, Udupi, Raipur, Godda and Mahan. The plants are mostly coal fired and mostly sited next to the group's own ports or mines, which is what keeps the fuel cost and the logistics inside the same balance sheet.^[6]

Coal supply is the connecting tissue. The group bought the Bunyu mine in Indonesia in 2008, Abbot Point port in Australia in 2011, and the Carmichael project in Queensland's Galilee Basin, where it holds rights over a resource estimated at 10.4 gigatonnes of coal. India's own coal blocks, including the Orissa rights won in 2010, supply the domestic plants. Because so much of the group's revenue is tied to moving and burning coal, its accounts rise and fall with coal prices, import duties and the pace of India's renewable build out.^[1][16]

Transmission and distribution arrived with the purchase of the Mumbai power business of Reliance Infrastructure, announced in December 2017 at 18,800 crore rupees. That deal brought the group the licence to supply a city of about three million households and made Adani Energy Solutions, then Adani Transmission, one of the largest private transmission owners in the country, with lines and substations across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Haryana.^[7]

The group has also been accused of inflating the price of the coal it imports and supplies. Investigative reporting has described coal bought through offshore intermediaries at prices well above the market and low grade coal sold as high grade coal to domestic utilities, and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has examined whether the value of Indonesian coal was overstated to overcharge power companies. The group has denied wrongdoing in each case.^[1]

Gas, and the partnership with TotalEnergies

Adani Total Gas is the group's city gas distribution business, built around Adani Gas and now run as a joint venture with the French major TotalEnergies. In October 2019 TotalEnergies bought a 37.4 per cent stake in Adani Gas for 6,155 crore rupees and took joint control, and in February 2020 it put a further 510 million dollars into a subsidiary of Adani Green Energy. The partnership gave the group capital and a technical partner at a time when city gas networks were being auctioned across India.^[10][11]

The largest of the joint plans was green hydrogen. In June 2022 TotalEnergies agreed to take a 25 per cent stake in Adani New Industries by investing 12.5 billion dollars in the new subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, which was to build electrolysers, renewable generation and the manufacturing chain needed to produce hydrogen at Mundra. It was one of the largest energy transition commitments in India at the time, and it made the group a serious counterparty for global energy majors rather than only a coal trader.^[14]

That partnership became more cautious after November 2024, when United States prosecutors charged Gautam Adani and associates over an alleged bribery scheme. TotalEnergies said it would make no new investments in the group until the allegations were cleared, and the group's green hydrogen build out continued at a slower pace while the case ran. The episode showed how quickly a governance shock can freeze a global partner's capital.^[1]

Airports

The airports business began with a forced sale elsewhere. In August 2020 the group acquired a majority stake in the operators of Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport and the under construction Navi Mumbai airport after entering a debt acquisition agreement with the GVK Group. In February 2021 it completed a deal to take 23.5 per cent more of the Mumbai airport to raise its ownership to about 74 per cent.^[9][8]

Under a concession agreement with the Airports Authority of India the group also won 50 year leases on six airports, at Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram. That gave one company seven airports, which is why the group is now described as the largest airport operator in India, and it also made it the natural target of criticism about concentration of national infrastructure in a single private group.^[1]

The airport business is a long duration concession with a regulated tariff, so its value depends on passenger volumes, capital expenditure on terminals and the non aeronautical revenue from retail and advertising. Navi Mumbai airport, delayed for years, is the group's biggest single greenfield project in the sector, and the plan is for it to take pressure off the Mumbai site that it also runs.^[1]

One smaller episode shows how the group's many businesses interact. In May 2025 the group abruptly ended a partnership with the China based lounge provider DragonPass, days after announcing it, saying that DragonPass users would no longer have access to Adani airport lounges.^[1]

Cement and building materials

Cement is the group's clearest bet on the domestic construction cycle. In May 2022 it acquired Ambuja Cements and ACC from Holcim for 10.5 billion dollars, a deal that overnight made the group the second largest cement maker in India after UltraTech and gave it quarries, grinding units, a distribution network and two of the oldest brand names in the industry.^[12]

The cement business is run as a separate, listed arm with its own management and is valued on capacity, cost per tonne and the spread between cement prices and coal prices, which makes it sensitive to the same fuel chain as the power business. The group has added capacity since, buying Sanghi Industries and Penna Cement among others, with the plan to take its installed capacity toward 140 million tonnes a year.^[1]

For a conglomerate that spent three decades building ports and power plants, cement is the first business that sells to ordinary households and small builders rather than to utilities and traders. That makes the brand, the dealer network and the regional price wars more important than the size of the balance sheet, and it is the part of the group most exposed to a slowdown in housing construction.^[1]

Adani Wilmar and consumer goods

Adani Wilmar was formed in 2000 as an equal joint venture between the group and Wilmar International of Singapore for edible oil refining, and it grew into one of the largest food businesses in India. Its Fortune brand of cooking oil became the group's best known consumer product, and the company later added wheat flour, rice, pulses, sugar and packaged foods built on the same distribution network that moved oil across the country.^[1]

The business was listed on the stock exchanges in 2022, which turned the group's food arm into a separately valued company and gave the group a benchmark for what its consumer assets were worth. Edible oil is a thin margin, commodity price driven business with import dependency on palm and soya, so its profits move with global oilseed prices and with government duty changes far more than with the group's infrastructure projects.^[1]

Wilmar sits at the intersection of the group's oldest trading instinct and its newest ambition: buying at scale, processing, packing and selling under a brand. It is also the one large group business that a household recognises without knowing it belongs to the Adani Group, which is why it matters to the group's public image as much as to its profit.^[1]

Green energy, hydrogen and data centres

Adani Green Energy is the group's answer to the criticism that its cash comes from coal. The business began in earnest with the 648 MW Kamuthi solar plant in Tamil Nadu in 2016, built at an estimated cost of 4,550 crore rupees, which was the largest single location solar plant in the world when it was commissioned. A 50:50 joint venture signed with the Rajasthan government in 2015 was planned at 10,000 MW.^[1]

The build out accelerated with acquisitions and with capital from partners. Adani Green Energy agreed in May 2021 to buy SB Energy, a joint venture of SoftBank Group and Bharti Enterprises, for 3.5 billion dollars, and TotalEnergies took a 20 per cent stake in the platform in January 2021 for about 2.5 billion dollars while funding the green hydrogen subsidiary separately. The company has said publicly that it aims for 50 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2030, which requires it to add several gigawatts a year.^[1][14]

Green hydrogen is the industrial half of the plan. Adani New Industries, the subsidiary that TotalEnergies agreed to fund with 12.5 billion dollars, is meant to build solar modules, wind turbines and electrolysers at Mundra rather than import them, so that the group manufactures the equipment for its own generation and then sells the output to refineries, fertiliser plants and export markets.^[14]

Data centres are the newest addition. AdaniConneX, the group's joint venture with EdgeConneX, has been building capacity for hyperscale customers in Chennai, Noida, Hyderabad and Mumbai, and the group has said it intends to link that capacity to its power and renewable assets so that a large customer can buy both the space and the electricity from the same supplier.^[1]

Defence and aerospace

Adani Defence and Aerospace was formed to move the group into weapons manufacturing, one of the few industrial sectors in India where policy aims to replace imports. In 2016 Adani Aero Defence signed a pact with the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems and with Alpha Design Technologies to work on unmanned aircraft systems in India, and in 2018 the group announced a joint venture with Elbit Systems to produce Hermes 900 military drones in the country.^[1]

The business expanded into small arms and ammunition, with a plant at Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and into radars and simulation. Reporting has said that 20 Hermes 900 drones were supplied to Israel in February 2024, which drew criticism because the Indian government abstained on a United Nations vote calling for an arms embargo on Israel in April 2024. The group has also said its defence companies employ hundreds of engineers and are part of the government's Make in India programme.^[1]

Customs authorities later opened an inquiry into Adani Defence. In October 2025 Reuters reported that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence had begun an investigation in March 2025 into alleged customs duty evasion of about 77 crore rupees over the classification of missile components as exempt from import duties. The company has not been convicted in the matter.^[1]

Media, sports and the public face

In August 2022 AMG Media Networks, a group company, said it would buy RRPR Holding, which owned 29.18 per cent of the news broadcaster NDTV, and made an open offer for another 26 per cent. NDTV said the stake had been acquired through a third party without informing its founders, the journalist Radhika Roy and the economist Prannoy Roy, and described the transaction as done without discussion, consent or notice. By December 2022 the group was reported to hold the largest shareholding in NDTV. The Economist wrote that the channel had been critical of the government before the takeover and was supine afterwards.^[1]

The group added other media assets: a majority stake in the news agency Indo-Asian News Service in December 2023, and reporting that the parent of India TV had backing from Gautam Adani. It also bought the business news operation that became BQ Prime, later renamed. Taken together the acquisitions made the group a significant owner of Indian news media, which critics say creates a conflict for a company that is itself the subject of so much coverage.^[1]

Sport is the friendlier face of the same strategy. The group owns the Gujarat Giants in the Pro Kabaddi League, the Gulf Giants in the International League T20, a franchise in the Legends League Cricket and a team in the Women's Premier League. Adani Sportsline was an official partner of the Indian Olympic Association for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the Hangzhou Asian Games and the Paris Olympics, and the group runs Garv Hai, a programme that has supported athletes in archery, shooting, athletics, boxing and wrestling.^[1]

Revenue and financials

For the year ended March 2024 the group reported a consolidated top line of about 3.09 lakh crore rupees across its ten listed firms, with profit after tax of about 42,396 crore rupees and taxes paid of about 6,482 crore rupees, according to data from ACE Equity reported by Business Today. That is the number the group uses when it speaks of its scale, and it is a sum across very different businesses, from ports and power to edible oil.^[2]

Leverage is the number lenders watch. The group's corporate debt totalled about 30 billion dollars in 2022, and in August 2022 CreditSights, a unit of Fitch Ratings, warned that the group's aggressive expansion had hurt cash flow and credit metrics and that a worst case scenario could end in a debt trap. After outreach from the group, CreditSights softened its language but kept its conclusion on the level of leverage.^[1]

Market capitalisation tells the same story in fast forward. In September 2022 the group's market value reached about 206 billion dollars, making it the most valuable Indian group, ahead of Tata Group. After the Hindenburg report it lost more than 104 billion dollars of value, and in May 2024 it returned above 200 billion dollars as the Supreme Court directed SEBI to expedite its investigation. In January 2026 group shares fell about ten per cent, a loss of roughly 12.5 billion dollars, after the SEC moved to serve summons on the defendants in the bribery case.^[3][1]

Because the group builds rather than buys, free cash flow has been thin by design and growth has been funded by debt and equity raised against each project. Interest cover, the ratio of earnings to interest cost, is therefore the single most useful number in the annual reports, and the group's own presentations emphasise earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rather than cash conversion.^[1][2]

Shareholding and ownership

The group is controlled through family trusts that sit above the listed companies. The promoter family holds roughly 74 per cent of the flagship Adani Enterprises and about 61 per cent of Adani Ports, with similar but smaller holdings in the power, transmission, gas, green energy and cement companies, which is what allows a single family to direct a group of this size while minority shareholders own the rest.^[1]

Global institutions have taken long term positions alongside the family. In May 2022 International Holding Company of Abu Dhabi invested two billion dollars, or about 15,400 crore rupees, in three group companies, and GQG Partners, founded by Rajiv Jain, bought about 4.6 billion dollars of shares in six group companies after the Hindenburg report, a bet that made it the most visible institutional holder of the post-crisis period.^[13][1]

The equity story since 2023 has been about reassurance rather than expansion: paring debt, reducing the pace of new capital expenditure, completing projects already under construction and keeping enough free float and index membership to stay investable. Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports remain constituents of the Nifty 50, and the group's bond programme depends on international investors continuing to accept its refinancing.^[1]

Related party transactions are the part of the ownership structure that analysts examine most closely, because a group that builds its own projects with its own contractors concentrates a large share of spending inside the family's ambit. Deloitte raised concerns in May 2023 about payments made by the ports company to a contractor and could not determine whether the firm should be treated as a related party, which is why the audit committee's disclosures now attract as much attention as the earnings.^[1]

Employees and offices

The group is headquartered at Ahmedabad, where its corporate centre sits at Shantigram on the outskirts of the city, and it keeps offices in Mumbai, Delhi and the capitals of the states where it operates. Its workforce is reported at about 36,000 people, a modest number for a group of its size because ports, mines and power plants depend heavily on contract labour and because the group's balance sheet is made of assets rather than people.^[1]

The specialist companies carry their own staffing needs. The airports business employs ground handling and terminal staff, the ports company runs a logistics workforce, the cement companies hold the group's largest blue collar payroll, and the software and defence units need engineers. The group's capital expenditure plans imply a further rise in the workforce wherever new capacity is commissioned, particularly in cement, renewables and airports.^[1]

Mundra, where the group's port, power plants, solar manufacturing and special economic zone sit together, is the clearest example of how it organises work: one geography where several companies share infrastructure, labour pools and local administration. That clustering is efficient and it also concentrates the group's environmental footprint and its exposure to any single state government's decisions.^[1]

Acquisitions and joint ventures

• Dhamra Port: acquired from the Tata Steel and L and T joint venture in May 2014 for 5,500 crore rupees, adding an east coast port with about 14.3 million tonnes of cargo in the year to March 2014.^[5]
• Mumbai power business: bought from Reliance Infrastructure in December 2017 for 18,800 crore rupees, bringing generation, distribution and a city licence.^[7]
• Adani Gas and TotalEnergies: TotalEnergies bought 37.4 per cent in October 2019 for 6,155 crore rupees and took joint control.^[10]
• Adani Green Energy and Total: a further 510 million dollars into an Adani Green subsidiary in February 2020.^[11]
• Airports: majority control of the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airport operators in August 2020 after a debt acquisition agreement with GVK, and 50 year leases on six other airports under an Airports Authority of India concession.^[9][8]
• SB Energy: agreed in May 2021 for 3.5 billion dollars, bringing SoftBank and Bharti's renewable portfolio into Adani Green Energy.^[1]
• Ambuja Cements and ACC: bought from Holcim in May 2022 for 10.5 billion dollars, making the group India's second largest cement maker.^[12]
• International Holding Company: two billion dollars in three group companies in May 2022.^[13]
• Adani New Industries: TotalEnergies agreed in June 2022 to invest 12.5 billion dollars for a quarter of the green hydrogen business.^[14]
• Media: the NDTV stake in 2022 and a majority stake in the news agency Indo-Asian News Service in December 2023.^[1]
• Cement capacity: Sanghi Industries in 2023 and Penna Cement after it, as the group pushes toward its capacity target.^[1]

Competition

The group's oldest competitor is Tata Group, which runs ports, power, steel, airlines and a large consumer business, and which the Adani group overtook in market value in September 2022. In power and transmission it competes with NTPC, Power Grid and the state owned generators and distributors; in ports with DP World, APM Terminals and state run port trusts; in cement with UltraTech of the Aditya Birla Group; and in airports with GMR, which runs Delhi and Hyderabad.^[3][1]

Reliance Industries is the other large private group whose ambitions overlap, in energy, retail and digital infrastructure, and comparisons between the two are unavoidable because both are family controlled and both grew by owning infrastructure that others use. In green energy the group competes with ReNew, Tata Power and state backed producers, and in city gas with Indraprastha Gas, Mahanagar Gas and Gujarat Gas.^[1]

Competition in Indian infrastructure is often about auctions and concessions rather than products, so the group's real edge is its ability to fund and build a project faster than a rival and to run it at a lower cost once it is operating. That edge depends on the cost of capital, which is precisely what governance allegations can change.^[1][12]

Cronyism and political proximity

No large Indian group has been discussed in terms of political proximity as much as the Adani Group has. Gautam Adani has been described as close to Narendra Modi since his years as chief minister of Gujarat, and critics argue that the group's wins in energy, ports and infrastructure have followed that relationship. Al Jazeera examined state decisions on coal and concluded that the government allowed deals it knew to be inappropriate, a finding the government and the group dispute. Both the group and the government have denied cronyism.^[15][1]

The specific allegations are about land, fuel and contracts. Forbes Asia noted that the group had leased almost 7,350 hectares from governments at rates as low as one United States cent a square metre and sublet some of it at far higher prices, and in Jharkhand the state government was accused of making an exception to its energy policy for the group's Godda plant. In Kutch, land acquired for a power plant was reported to have caused significant environmental damage.^[1]

The pattern was said to travel with the prime minister abroad. A Sri Lankan president reportedly told an electricity board official that Modi had pressed him to transfer a wind project to the group, and after a visit to Bangladesh a deal to import electricity from Jharkhand was signed and later questioned by the opposition there. Reporting in the Washington Post described a proposal by the state insurer Life Insurance Corporation to invest about 3.9 billion dollars in Adani shares, and an eventual 585 million dollar investment in Adani Ports at a time when the company was repaying debt.^[1]

The group's defence is that it wins on price and speed, that Indian infrastructure needs private capital, and that other groups bid in the same auctions. Critics answer that the size of the group's wins and the timing of announcements around official visits are difficult to explain by price alone. There is no court finding of cronyism.^[1]

Environmental opposition and the Australian coal mine

The Carmichael coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin became the most contested project in the group's history. Launched with Australian and Queensland government support, it was planned as a 21.5 billion dollar investment over sixty years with an annual capacity of about ten million tonnes of thermal coal, and it drew criticism for its impact on groundwater, on the Great Barrier Reef and on global emissions.^[1][16]

The financing was the first casualty. Under pressure from environmental campaigners, international banks refused to fund the mine, and the Stop Adani campaign targeted Australia's big four banks. In November 2018 Adani Australia announced that the Carmichael project would be financed entirely from the group's own resources, and in July 2019 the project received its final government approvals. The first shipment from the mine was assembled at the North Queensland Export Terminal in Bowen in December 2021, and the Australian arm later changed its name to Bravus Mining and Resources.^[1][16]

The dispute also produced an unwelcome side story. The head of Adani's Australian mining division was criticised over his earlier role at a mining company that faced charges related to contamination of the Kafue River in Zambia, and the Australian government described the group's failure to disclose that history as a mistake without taking legal action. In 2020 the Australian Conservation Foundation took the federal government to court over water approvals for the mine.^[1]

In India the environmental argument runs through the group's other businesses: coal ash and emissions from the Mundra and Godda plants, land acquisition for the Kutch power project, air quality around its ports, and the question of whether a group that makes most of its money from coal can credibly lead the country's renewable transition. The group answers with its solar, wind and hydrogen build out and with the claim that Indian coal is needed until the grid can do without it.^[1][16]

The Hindenburg report and the American bribery case

In January 2023 the short seller Hindenburg Research published the findings of a two year investigation alleging stock manipulation and accounting fraud, describing what it called the largest con in corporate history. Hindenburg disclosed that it held short positions against group companies. In weeks the group's market value fell by more than 104 billion dollars, roughly half of it, and the report became the most consequential corporate governance event in India in a decade.^[1]

The group replied within days with a 413 page response calling Hindenburg's conduct a calculated securities fraud and the report a calculated attack on India and its institutions. Hindenburg said the reply failed to engage with the allegations. On 1 February 2023 the group cancelled its fully subscribed follow on public offer of about 2.5 billion dollars and said it would return the money, the Reserve Bank of India asked banks for their exposure to group firms, Citigroup stopped margin lending against Adani securities, Credit Suisse assigned zero lending value to the group's bonds, and S&P Dow Jones Indices removed Adani Enterprises from its sustainability index.^[1]

The regulators then moved slowly and in public. A Supreme Court committee said in May 2023 that it could not conclude there had been a regulatory failure because SEBI's explanations were insufficient, SEBI obtained extensions, and the court later set a ninety day deadline. American authorities opened their own enquiries into the group's communications with investors in June 2023, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project published allegations about funds routed through Mauritius, and the National Financial Reporting Authority began examining the group's auditors. In March 2024 seven group firms received show cause notices from SEBI over related party transactions and listing rules.^[1]

The criminal case in the United States is more serious than the regulatory questions. On 20 November 2024 federal prosecutors in New York charged Gautam Adani and his associates with fraud, alleging that they bribed Indian government officials with more than 250 million dollars to win solar power contracts. Kenyan president William Ruto cancelled a 30 year airport lease and a transmission contract the next day, saying he had been misled, and the group's shares fell sharply. In March 2025 the Indian government began proceedings to serve an SEC summons on Gautam Adani, and in January 2026 group shares fell about ten per cent after the SEC asked an Indian court to issue email summons to the defendants. The group denies all allegations and its companies have said they will defend themselves.^[1]

Controversies and criticism

Some of the oldest disputes predate the short seller by a decade and a half. In 2007 SEBI barred several Adani companies from buying or selling securities for two years over a manipulation scheme run between 1999 and 2001 through entities controlled by the broker Ketan Parekh, and the companies paid a fine of about 140,000 dollars before resuming trading. In February 2010 the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Rajesh Adani, then managing director of Adani Enterprises, over alleged customs duty evasion of about 80 lakh rupees.^[1]

Tax and transfer pricing claims followed. In 2014 the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence traced funds from India through South Korea and Dubai to a Mauritius company said to be owned by the founder's brother, and forwarded evidence suggesting a diversion of about 2,323 crore rupees to SEBI, which disclosed the correspondence only in 2023. Customs officials alleged in 2017 that the group was diverting funds to family entities overseas and used a Dubai company for part of it, and the details of a 235 million dollar diversion were published by The Guardian. The group has denied the allegations.^[1]

Publishing has been another front. After the Economic and Political Weekly carried an article about the group's tax affairs, Adani Power sent a legal notice, the magazine removed the article and its editor resigned, an episode widely described as a warning to Indian business journalists. Reporting has also described the use of defamation cases against individual writers, and in February 2023 the Wikipedia community publication The Signpost reported that accounts linked to the group had edited the encyclopedia's articles about it to insert promotional material and remove criticism.^[1]

A separate line of enquiry concerns coal pricing between group companies and their customers. Investigators have looked at whether imported coal was bought through intermediaries at more than double the market price and whether low grade coal was billed as high grade coal to domestic utilities, and the group has fought the release of documents in Singapore. In March 2023 the group won a coal block auction in which the only other bidder was a company also named in the earlier reporting, which opposition parties cited as evidence of bid rigging.^[1]

Reading the numbers

There are three ways to read the Adani Group's accounts and they are easy to confuse. The first is the individual listed company, which reports its own revenue, profit and debt under Indian accounting standards. The second is the group total, which adds up the companies and produces the figures of about 3.09 lakh crore rupees of revenue and about 42,396 crore rupees of profit for the year ended March 2024. The third is the promoter's consolidated view, which includes unlisted entities and joint ventures. A number without one of those labels is close to meaningless.^[2][1]

The second thing to watch is what kind of profit is being counted. A group that is building ports, airports, transmission lines and solar parks records earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation that look strong relative to profits, because depreciation and interest on new assets are heavy in the early years of a project. Cash flow from operations is the more honest measure, and it has historically lagged reported earnings because so much of the money earned is reinvested or still tied up in working capital.^[2][1]

The third is the cost of that capital. Group debt of about 30 billion dollars in 2022 was raised against projects and refinanced in international bond markets, so the interest rate the market charges the group is itself a verdict on its governance. When spreads widen, new capex gets pushed out, which is exactly what happened after 2023 and again after the American charges.^[1]

Read that way, the group is a leveraged infrastructure company whose growth is a function of its funding cost, and the controversies matter not because of the fines involved but because of the financing they can interrupt. That is why the market capitalisation swings of more than 100 billion dollars in either direction have been driven by news about investigations rather than by quarterly earnings.^[1][3]

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