Adani group to press the pedal on its retail play through super app

Group's B2C initiative aims to connect with 500 mn users by 2030

With an existing consumer base of 400 million across airports, electricity and gas distribution businesses, the Adani group is revving up its retail play. It is planning to use the 2.4 billion consumer interactions a year with group companies to push various products and services.

The group has already launched the ‘Adani One’ super app that will eventually sell products across the spectrum, top executives said.

Apart from infrastructure business, which will remain the group’s mainstay, the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment, housed under Adani Digital Labs Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of group flagship Adani Enterprises, will be scaled up as the consumer base grows.

 

Adani Digital Labs aims to connect with 500 million users directly through its super app by 2030 via various Adani portfolio and partner services, including airports, and electricity and gas consumers.

The investment philosophy for the digital project remains the same as with other projects. “We want to fund world-class projects in our portfolio and get at least 15 per cent returns on our investments,” said Jugeshinder (‘Robbie’) Singh, Adani Group chief financial officer (CFO).

At present, the group operates under four main verticals — utilities (green hydrogen and data centres), transport and logistics (airports and roads), materials, metals and mining (defence, copper, PVC and aluminum), and direct to consumer (digital labs).

The new businesses under incubation by Adani Enterprises are slated for future demergers, thus offering substantial scope for value unlocking from the firm, officials said.

Adani Enterprises closed flat at Rs 3,166 a share on Wednesday with a total market valuation of Rs 3.6 trillion.

Adani’s investments in a consumer-facing super app will give direct competition to other homegrown super apps launched by the Tata and Reliance groups.

These homegrown super apps are facing intense competition from global giants like Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart, which have a significant market share in the e-commerce business in India.

“When a customer walks into our airport premises, there are several interactions with us. Very likely, about a third of the passengers would land in one of our airports, shops, and take a car, or an Ola/Uber or a taxi. This will lead to several interactions with us. It’s a remarkable achievement from a business point of view that with that kind of interaction, one would be hard-pressed to find any issue in the last year,” Singh said. He added that these error-free interactions show the business excellence practices followed by various verticals.

The investment in B2C is part of the $100 billion investments planned by the group across its verticals, including airports, ports and roads, in the next decade.

Singh said the group has tied up for the entire investment plans. These projects would be financed by a mix of equity and debt instruments.

GAME PLAN

* Adani group will use existing consumer base of 400 mn to push products and services

* Adani One super app to compete with Tata, Amazon, Flipkart

* Adani Digital housed under flagship Adani Enterprises

* Adani One app to be used for payments at airports and other services