Adani Ports & SEZ

India's 1991 liberalization policies were a tailwind Adani exploited quickly, expanding trading into metals, textiles and agro products. In 1994 Gujarat outsourced management of Mundra Port; Adani won the contract in 1995, set up the first jetty, and built Mundra into India's largest private-sector port — handling close to 210 million tonnes of cargo per annum at peak capacity under Adani Ports & SEZ (APSEZ).

The Adani corporate journey page attributes early growth to the founder's 'ability of integrating assets' — beginning with the Mundra jetty in the mid-1990s, expanding to a full port, then creating Adani Power in 1996. The narrative frames each new business as an adjacency to the prior one, with the port as the gravitational center from which power, logistics, gas and agri-trading radiate.

Mundra Port's commercial operations began in 2001 alongside the City Gas Distribution business. The 2002 launch of single point mooring — which docked the MV Silver Clipper, India's first capesize vessel carrying nearly 123,000 tonnes of Australian resources — was the visible proof point that Mundra could handle global-scale dry bulk traffic.

The 2007 Mundra Port & SEZ IPO was 116 times oversubscribed, and Adani Power Ltd's 2009 IPO was 21x subscribed. The capital-markets access these IPOs unlocked fueled the overseas mine acquisitions in Indonesia (Bunyu, 2008) and Australia (Carmichael, 2010-2011), marking Adani's transition from domestic infrastructure operator to global resource player.

Adani Power Ltd became India's largest private thermal power generator in 2014 with 9,280 MW capacity. APSEZ acquired Dhamra Port in Odisha and won a container terminal contract at Ennore the same year — extending the 'string of pearls' along India's coastline that the group has used as a recurring spatial metaphor for port-roll strategy.

In 2020 the group won a mandate to operate six airports — Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram among them — diversifying into aviation infrastructure. AGEL won the contract for the world's largest solar project, and APSEZ completed the acquisition of Krishnapatnam Port, consolidating east-coast presence.

Adani Green signed what the company claims is the world's largest green PPA with SECI in 2021, ranking among the largest solar developers and renewable energy companies globally. APSEZ's Rs 6,200 crore acquisition of Gangavaram Port unlocked India's eastern hinterland, extending the port network into new cargo catchments.