Adani Enterprises has confirmed that it has won the bids that were invited by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for the management of six airports at Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram.

Requests for Proposals for each of the airports were issued in December 2018, with 50-year concession contracts to be awarded to the respondent that offered the highest per-passenger fee payment to AAI.

AAI has published the bids received, as illustrated in the table below. The figures represent the proposed per-passenger fee for domestic passengers in Indian rupees (INR):

GMR Airports, which operates Delhi International Airport and Hyderabad International Airport under concession contracts, was the only other entity besides Adani Enterprises to bid for all six airports, though its bids were significantly lower than Adani's.

The concessions to operate Ahmedabad (Gujarat state), Guwahati (Assam), Jaipur (Rajasthan) and Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) airports attracted competitive bids, with Adani facing close competition from Australian investor AMP Capital and a consortium containing Zurich Airport International AG.

The airports at Mangaluru (Karnataka) and Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) failed to attract the same level of competition. This is particularly surprising considering the latter, as there is little difference in passenger traffic between Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram. Jaipur, the busiest of the four, handled just under 4.76 million passengers in 2017-18, while Thiruvananthapuram handled just under 4.4 million.

As concessionaire, the Adani Group subsidiary shall broadly be responsible for operations and management of the existing airport assets as well as for designing, engineering, financing, construction and development of further/additional air-side, terminal, city-side and land-side infrastructure.

The wins represent the group's entry into the aviation sector. Official Letters of Award (LOAs) are scheduled to be issued tomorrow.