Rating frameworks should capture multi-layer, futuristic infrastructure, not just individual assets as the country builds new infra projects , said Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani at an event in Mumbai on Monday.
“Rating frameworks often measure individual assets. But we must realise that the real value in today’s age is being created at the intersection, where ‘energy + data + manufacturing’ converge,” Adani said an event held by CareEdge Ratings.
Adani said as the scale of country’s ambition grows, so does the importance of the frameworks that judge it.
“Transformational infrastructure can be constrained not only by a lack of ambition or capital, but also by the frameworks through which its risks are assessed,” he said.
He said it is not a call for less scrutiny, not for easier ratings nor for a call to compromise independence.”My point is exactly the opposite. India does not need lower standards. India needs wider lenses,” he said.
He recalled his experience with rating assessment of group’s key projects like Mundra , Khavda and Vizhinjam when they were building it.
He said traditional rating assessment might have looked Mundra (a port) as marshy coastline with no industrial ecosystem. “Speculative demand from customers that did not exist yet. Execution risk in a region with limited infrastructure. A 30-year cash flow model built on assumptions that no spreadsheet could validate.”.
Mundra proved that platform infrastructure operates as a multi-layer network where each new layer cross-subsidizes, feeds, and de-risks the other, creating an economic compounding flywheel that linear financial models mostly fail to capture, he said.
“If we build only for the demand we can see today, India will always be late for the opportunities of tomorrow. “he said .
For Vizhinjam, for twenty-five years, nobody could build a solution. Tender after tender failed. The engineering was deemed “too complex.” The breakwater was “too deep.”he said.
The capital risk was “too immense.” Even with a large viability gap funding, traditional frameworks struggled to justify the project, he said , adding” Vizhinjam was strategically compelling, yet unprofitable when measured through conventional financial tests.”
On Khavda , he said through a traditional framework, there was extreme isolation, harsh desert, execution risk, and demand that is uncertain. These are real challenges — and the caution is justified.
Khavda is a platform where energy, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, digital infrastructure and industrial capability converge at an unprecedented scale, he said
“It is the foundation for India’s AI manufacturing ecosystem.
It can become part of the foundation upon which India’s AI economy is built,” he said. Measured simply as a power project, Khavda will be under rated for decades. But when measured as a transformational platform, it will be one of India’s most important strategic assets., he said.
Adani said traditional rating frameworks work well in replacement infrastructure — expanding what already exists, maintaining proven assets, replacing aging capacity.
He said in growth infrastructure — adding capacity in established sectors where demand is visible and economics are broadly understood—here, existing frameworks should evolve to capture ecosystem effects and multiplier value, “not just standalone cash flows.”
Platform infrastructure assets Mundra, Vizhinjam and Khavda do not just satisfy existing demand, they create new demand, new ecosystems, create new capabilities and change economics around them, he said.
“And therefore, they require an analytical framework capable of measuring not just standalone cash flows, but also ecosystem multipliers, strategic resilience and adjacency value,” he said..