What you dream, you create and What you think, you become: Gautam Adani

In an event held in Mumbai, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani said, I am honoured and inspired to stand before you today. Honoured, because in this room, I see the young leaders who embody our nation’s unlimited potential. Inspired, because each of you are shaping the future of our matrubhumi. I am also delighted to see so many women leaders here as well as so many youngsters. Your presence here is essential. You are the ones that bring fresh perspective and new energy and can challenge stereotype thinking. You enhance the confluence of minds that help shape a more inclusive future for all.

A few months back, when I was asked to speak here, it was suggested that I talk about my journey and the future I see for our country. And over the next 35 minutes, I hope I can hold you to your seats with my story – marked not just by my success but also lessons learned from my challenges. I believe it is a narrative filled with unexpected turns, resilience in the face of adversity, and pursuit of a set of dreams many thought impossible. What I hope I can do is ignite a spark within each of you – a spark that keeps our nation at the top of your minds as you act boldly and lead with your heart.

Starting with my childhood, or the first 15 years of my life, my upbringing was spread across two places, the deserts of Banaskantha and the poles of Ahmedabad. The deserts teach a lot – that life in its barren form forces us to adapt in our own ways. The scorching heat and the dusty winds of Banaskatha taught me resilience.

And then came the days in the pols of Ahmedabad. It was unique in its own way. The essence of bonding, relationships, the humanity, the feelings of helping one in need came naturally from experience of my life in the pols. 

During this formative period there were 2 people who influenced me. My mother, who was the pillar of our household and instrumental in keeping our joint family tightly knit. Her commitment to hold our large family together laid the foundation of my family values and beliefs.

And the second was my father who was in the business of forward trading. In those days, the transactions happened verbally, mostly on the telephone, without any written documents, or contracts. At a very young age I saw that these verbal commitments never failed.

 These experiences from my childhood played a significant part in shaping my beliefs, and resulted in what today are the core values of the Adani group – the Courage to withstand, the Trust in the people, and the Commitment to a larger cause.

My dear friends – I was just 16 years old when I chose to give up my education and move to Mumbai. In this context, a question I often get asked is – why did I move to Mumbai and not complete my education? As many of the youngsters in the audience would agree, the optimism and desire for independence of a teenage boy are hard to contain. What I knew was that – I wanted to do something different – and do it on my own – hence I took this decision to move to Mumbai and see if I could make my life there!

I worked for four years in Mumbai in the diamond business. Mumbai is a unique place. It is a city where every heartbeat echoes – Think Big – Dream Bigger! And what Mumbai really taught me – was to aspire. 

Thereafter, just as I was about to turn 19 and was settling in Mumbai, life took an unexpected turn. I was called back by my elder brother to assist in running a small-scale PVC film factory we had acquired near Ahmedabad. The business was challenging due to the scarcity of raw materials caused by heavy import restrictions.

This challenge set the base for my next big lesson. Most of you will find it hard to imagine – but these were the days of heavy Government controls where businesses needed licenses to import most raw materials. This led to severe shortages that made small scale industries struggle. 

But all this was set to change following the elections in 1985. Shri Rajiv Gandhi had just become the Prime Minister and he initiated the liberalization of import policies. Despite having no experience, I grabbed the opportunity and swiftly established a trading organization and began importing polymers to supply to the needy small-scale industries.

My dear friends – This start of liberalization gave me – my first big break. I was 23. Then came the massive foreign exchange reserve crisis of 1991. There was panic as India was down to less than 10 days of foreign exchange. It was during this crisis that Shri P V Narasimha Rao – then the PM, and Dr. Manmohan Singh – then the finance minister announced a series of very bold economic liberalization policies which included a roadmap for reduction of import tariffs, industry deregulation, the opening up to foreign investments, and development of infrastructure through public private partnerships. All of this was to dramatically reshape the business environment and effectively ended the “License Raj”. This further opening up of the economy created my second big break. I was 29.

Spotting this opportunity, I quickly established a Global Trading house dealing in the export and import of polymers, metals, textiles, and agro-products. And within two years, we had become the country’s largest global trading house. My dear friends – In hindsight, there are always experiences whose importance becomes obvious only later in life. And as I have reflected, I can say that there are very few life lessons as effective as learning the art of trading. Trading is a mental battle – both with the market and with one’s own self. Each loss teaches a lesson. Every gain imparts wisdom. This mantra has always stayed with me.

I look back at the series of events of 1985 and 1991 as the first wave of transformation that left its imprint across the country’s business landscape. I witnessed many of the existing businesses houses that had become very large entities since independence simply failed to recognize the market shifts as a result of the policy changes. They just failed to evolve and thereby became weak or irrelevant over the years that followed.

I learnt that – status quo – can be a very great weakness. Conversely, the same policy changes opened up a whole set of opportunities for a new breed of Indian companies that took advantage of the reforms. What I can confidently state today is that we are an outcome of the economic reforms of 1985 and 1991. Where others failed to transform, we saw the opportunity and adapted swiftly to the new liberalization regulations and guidelines.

Thereafter, in 1994, we decided it was time to go public, and thus Adani Exports, now known as Adani Enterprises, launched its IPO. The IPO was a strong success and underscored for me the importance of public markets.However, I had also started realizing that just a trading business came with its own limitations. In the long run, to gain the market’s trust, it became clear that I needed to develop assets that would provide the company with more stability and a foundation for consistent growth.

This reflection led me to the next set of choices that I made, and this was to become one of the most critical shifts in our business model. And the opportunity came about in 1995 when the BJP Govt in its Gujarat election manifesto announced its port led industrial development plan through the public private partnership mode. I see this as my third major break in 1995 – and shifted us to a new orbit. I was 31.

By coincidence, it was around this same time that the global commodities trader Cargill had approached us with a partnership proposal to source the salt from Kutch. The partnership did not proceed. But we were left with about 40,000 acres of marshy land and an approval to build a captive jetty at Mundra for export of salt.

And this turned out to be a blessing in disguise when, under the PPP agreement, we were selected by the Gujarat government to develop a full-fledged commercial port in Mundra. Keep in mind, while I knew our end objective was to build a port, we had not even laid a brick in our life.

Thereafter, the next opportunity followed when the Gujarat Government announced the SEZ policy in 2005. The 40,000 acres of marshy land around Mundra port that was considered of very little value, had now become a priceless asset.

We moved quickly to convert the land originally allocated for salt works – into what is now the country’s largest multi-product SEZ – supported by an unparalleled world class infrastructure including ports, rail, and air networks.

My dear friends – Let me now talk more about Mundra. It fundamentally reshaped my thinking on the value of integrated business models. Today it hosts – India’s largest port, largest industrial SEZ, largest container terminals, largest power plant, largest solar manufacturing facility, largest edible oil refinery.

If Mumbai, in my teenage days had taught me to aspire. Mundra taught me that – What you dream, you create and What you think, you become.

It is our adoption of this principle that has led to the outcome of the Adani Group being able to continue its journey of hyper growth – and today:

• We are the world’s second largest solar power company.
• We are the largest airport operator with 25% of pax traffic and 40% of air cargo.
• We are the largest Ports & Logistics company with 30% of national market share.
• We are India’s largest integrated energy player. Our presence spans across generation, transmission, and distribution, LNG and LPG terminals, city gas and piped gas distribution.
• We are the country’s second largest cement manufacturer.
• And we have declared our path forward in new sectors including metals, petchem, aerospace and defence, data centres, super apps, and industrial clouds.

And our journey is only just starting – a journey built on one of the most exciting platforms that has ever existed – a platform called India.

My dear friends – If the last three decades since the 1990s have laid the foundation for India to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, the journey towards 2050 will be even more transformative and disruptive.

While the past three decades were about opening India to the world, the upcoming three decades will see the world opening up to India.

Keep in mind that following our independence, it took us 58 years to reach our first trillion dollars of GDP, 12 years to achieve the next, and just 5 years for the third trillion. This acceleration is unstoppable, and I anticipate that within the next decade, India will begin adding a trillion dollars to its GDP every 18 months, setting us on the path to becoming a 25 to 30 trillion-dollar economy by 2050.

During this period, I foresee the total market capitalization of listed companies in India to dramatically increase and range from 40 to 45 trillion dollars, indicating a tenfold growth from the current 4 trillion dollars. No other nation will be even close to achieving such growth and India will have its own trillion-dollar valued companies.

The trends are already visible, and one sign is seen in the number of billion-dollar valued companies we now have. Today, India is home to over 500 companies valued at over a billion dollars, ranking us fourth in the world. In 1991, we had none.

My dear friends – while we have a lot to celebrate, we should also keep in mind that if the License Raj elimination was the watershed moment of the 1990s and led to the era of liberalization – the age of digitalization that started in the 2010s is yet another era of transition that will again see several new businesses created and many vanish.

The digital age has democratized the playing field. It has thrown open opportunities to a far greater number of companies. This is the age of exponential growth. And the most striking manifestation of this digital revolution is the emergence of new disruptive tech billionaires. An interesting statistic is that in the 1990s, India had just two billionaires. Today, the number is 167.

My dear friends – As I have stated today, the foundation for change always begins with government policy. And I can confidently say that no Government in the world has been able to transform a nation like this Government has over the past 10 years. The strides, powered by several visionary government policies, have positioned us at the forefront of global growth as evident from the fact that we are now contributing an impressive 16% to worldwide economic expansion. This is a record that I expect we will continue to break repeatedly.

Strategically, financially, and geopolitically, India has never been more relevant to the world. My dear friends – I started my entrepreneurship journey in my teens. Entrepreneurship is about taking risks and being ok with sometimes getting lost, sometimes falling – but every time I was lost – every time I fell – I was still able to find my way back – I was still able to get up. I never feared falling. Therefore, I would like to leave you with five principles, and I hope these will mean something for all of you.

Number 1, All success will come with its challenges and its challengers. The greater your success, bigger will you be as a target and the true measure of your success will not be in your achievements but in your ability to rise through the adversities that will come with your achievements.

Every fall comes with its pains, but every rise comes with its gains. This gain is called resilience. And in the game of resilience your mind will be both – the battleground and the weapon.

Let me elaborate with the recent example of the shorting that the Adani Group had to go through. As most of you will be aware, last year on 24th January we were subject to a massive attack by a US short seller. The objective was not just to destabilize us but also to politically defame India’s governance practices. Despite the efforts to shake our foundations, we stood firm, not just safeguarding our reputation but also ensuring we remained focused on our operations. While there were several learnings, this episode also gave us confidence in our own resilience. Our recovery highlights the essence of bouncing back stronger, symbolizing the spirit of rising after every fall.

Number 2, We live in a complex world and it’s easy to be sold on the theory of simplicity.

While simplicity may be the goal, it is the ability to manage complexity that will differentiate you and make you the ones that can navigate the deep waters as against those that remain on the shallow shores.

Every business that I have built has been far more difficult than I had anticipated and over the years I have become wiser in my belief that only if I am able to embrace complexity better than others will I be able to differentiate.

Be it building the world’s largest renewable energy park in record time and spread over 750 square kilometres to generate 30 GW of green energy. Or taking on the world’s most complex and largest slum redevelopment project at Dharavi – our commitment to projects like these are just two recent examples.

Number 3, the dynamic model of a fast-growing nation like ours requires a flexible approach that is rooted in local models as against models that often emphasize specialization and core competencies.

The crux of strategic differentiation often lies in recognizing the limitations of bookish knowledge and western centric models. While it is important to source ideas from books and literature, keep in mind that these are after all opinions of brilliant story tellers with great ability to influence.

In our case, leveraging strategic adjacencies has been key to our corporate evolution, enabling a seamless transition across a spectrum of industries. Starting with coal trading, our ambitions guided us towards port development. This foundational move not only expanded our operational capabilities but also served as a springboard into the power generation sector.

Recognizing the interconnections of these sectors, we ventured into power transmission, subsequently leading to our expansion into distribution networks. The progression didn’t stop there; we continued further into power intensive industries and cutting-edge technology sectors, including data centres, and diversified our energy portfolio into LNG & LPG businesses, augmenting our capabilities by building terminals at our ports.

This model underscores our ability to identify and capitalize on business opportunities that, while seemingly different, share common operational and market adjacencies.

Number 4, resilience often requires the ability to withstand criticism. The higher you rise, the more you will need to prepare yourself to handle criticism. But instead of allowing it to deter progress, you must be willing to be misunderstood, and yet stay resilient.

Therefore, it is about cultivating an inner strength that allows you to remain strong in your convictions, even in the face of severe opposition.

An example of this was our Carmichael coal mine project in Australia. The rationale to go to Australia was to get access to better quality coal that India needed to light up millions of homes. Even in a country known for its massive coal exports, we faced formidable opposition from multiple groups that did not want to see us succeed and continuously targeted our reputation. Some of it was political, some ideological and some just vindictive.

Yet, it was my conviction in the project’s critical role in augmenting India’s energy security that drove my ambitions and willingness to take the criticism. For me it was a testimony to the commitment of the Adani group to take India toward its energy security ambitions, a pledge to ensure that we did our part to help ensure that no Indian is left in the dark.

Number 5 and, the most difficult of all – stay humble. Your own success will push back on your humility. But humility is the biggest differentiator you can build.   Humility is not thinking less of yourself – it is thinking of yourself a little less.

True leadership lies in acknowledging your achievements without letting them overshadow the value of self-awareness. My dear Friends – As I wrap up, let me paint a picture in your minds.

Imagine for a moment, standing at the edge of a vast ocean, your dreams on the far shore across the waters. The waters are turbulent, the journey unclear. Yet, here you are, ready to build the bridge to cross it. That’s entrepreneurship. That’s leadership. And that’s the spirit that defines each and every one of you here today.

As a fellow entrepreneur, I can only tell you that in the days to come – Try to never be in a situation – where you are disappointed by the bridges you did not build – and the new shores you did not explore. This is the way lasting legacies are built. I wish you all the very best as you reshape our matrubhumi. The New India awaits you.