The two Indian billionaires, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, have quietly expanded each in their respective fields for over two decades. Now it seems that their paths continue to cross again and again, as Adani, who is at the head of the group that recently purchased Haifa Port, continues to explore new areas and those that overlap with Ambani.
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According to a publication in “Bloomberg”, the Reliance Industries Ltd group, headed by Ambani, sought to acquire a foreign telecom giant, when it heard a rumor about Adani’s intentions to advance with an offer to purchase the rights to deploy the G5 technology in India.
Just a few months before, Adani had overtaken Ambani in the list of the richest people in Asia, taking first place. Although Ambani heads India’s leading mobile company, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, while Adani does not even have a license to provide telecommunications services, Adani’s intentions to enter Ambani’s express territory are enough to keep him alert.
Ambani, who is worth almost $90 billion, ultimately never made an offer to buy the foreign company, partly because he decided it would be wiser to keep financial ammunition in case of a challenge from Adani, which made the highest profit in the world this year and reached a capital of $118.3 billion. According to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Thus the ground was ripe for competition between the two, while India, whose economy stands at 3.2 trillion dollars, embraces the digital age and provokes a race for the rich who seek to expand beyond the various commodity sectors, the home fields of Ambani and Adani. The emerging opportunities—from e-commerce to data streaming and storage—are reminiscent of the 19th-century U.S. economic boom that fueled the rise of billionaire dynasties like the Carnegies, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers.
Despite the various speculations, in a public statement on July 9, the Adani Group stated that it has no intention of entering the cellular sector currently controlled by Ambani, and will only use airwaves purchased in the government tender to create “private network solutions” and improve cyber security at its airports and ports.
The competition between the two is increasing
Still, it seems that the overlap between the two billionaires is expanding. For decades, Adani’s businesses focused on sectors such as ports, coal mining and shipping, areas that Ambani has steered clear of thanks to his large oil investments. But in the last year this has changed dramatically: in March it was reported that the Adani Group is looking at potential partnerships in Saudi Arabia, including the possibility of acquiring its giant oil exporter, Aramco. A few months earlier, Ambani’s group – which still earns most of its revenue from crude-related businesses – scrapped plans to sell a 20% stake in its energy unit to Aramco, scrapping a deal that was two years in the making.
Also in the field of green energy, each of the billionaires expressed a commitment to invest more than 70 billion dollars in projects derived from the agenda of the Modi government. Meanwhile, Adani has begun to signal ambitions to take part in digital services, sports, retail, petrochemicals and media – sectors that Ambani is already active in or has big plans for.