: Ambani vs Adani at 5G auction but no direct market clash yet #IndiaNEWS #Business New Delhi: For years they tiptoed around each other but now the groups led by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam

Ambani vs Adani at 5G auction but no direct market clash yet #IndiaNEWS #Business
New Delhi: For years they tiptoed around each other but now the groups led by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani will for the first time be in direct competition when they later this month participate in the auction of airwaves capable of providing fifth generation or 5G telecom services.
But the rivalry between the two politically well-connected Gujarati businessmen will not yet see a full-blown market clash despite overlaps.
Saturday, Adani group confirmed plans to participate in the July 26 5G spectrum auction but said the airwaves it was seeking was to set up a private network to help digitise its businesses from airports to energy to data centres. This meant no entry into the consumer mobile telephony space, where Ambanis Reliance Jio is the largest player.
Jio as well as telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea Ltd the other two dominated telecom companies in the country have also made applications to participate in the 5G auction, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
While the three will be bidding to corner spectrum to support a pan-India rollout of 5G voice and data services, Adani will compete to get the same airwaves for private captive networks.
Incidentally, the telecom companies in the run-up for the auction bitterly opposed any direct allocation of spectrum to non-telecom entities for setting up private captive networks as it would severely impact their businesses. They wanted the non-telcos to lease out spectrum from them or they set up private captive networks for them. But the government weighed in favour of private networks.
Adani and Ambani the nations richest had taken contrasting approaches to business diversification, which in recent months has seen increasing overlap.
While Ambani, 65, expanded from the oil refining and petrochemicals business into consumer facing telecom and retail businesses, Adani diversified from operating ports to producing coal, energy distribution, airports, data centres and more recently into cement and copper.
Adani, 60, has in recent months set up a subsidiary for a foray into petrochemicals a business that Ambanis father Dhirubhai began with before its downstream and upstream operations.
Ambani too has announced multi-billion-dollar plans for new energy business, including Giga factories for solar panels, batteries, green hydrogen and fuel cells. Adani, who had previously announced plans to be the worlds largest renewable energy producer by 2030, too has unveiled hydrogen ambitions.
Sources, however, said while there is an overlap in the clean energy space, there is no direct competition between the two. While Adani group is looking to split water using solar power to produce green hydrogen, Ambanis Reliance is looking at producing hydrogen from natural gas and other hydrocarbons supported by carbon capture and storage.

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