જાણીતા ઉદ્યોગપતિ ગૌત્તમ અદાણીએ વતન પાલનપુરની મુલાકાત લીધી, જુની યાદો કરી તાજી

અમદાવાદઃ ગુજરાતના જાણીતા ઉદ્યોગપતિ ગૌત્તમ અદાણીએ પોતાના વતન પાલનપુરની મુલાકાત લીધી હતી. તેમજ તેઓ જે સ્કૂલમાં ભણ્યા હતા તે પાલનપુરમાં વિદ્યાનગર સ્કૂલના વિદ્યાર્થીઓ સાથે સંવાદ કર્યો હતો. તેમણે વિદ્યાર્થીઓ સમક્ષ બનાસકાંઠા જિલ્લા સાથે જોડાયેલી પોતાની યાદોને તાજી કરી હતી.

તેમણે જણાવ્યું હતું કે,  વંદનીય શિક્ષણગણ, આદરણીય મહાજનો, મારા વડીલો, સ્નેહીજનો, મિત્રો અને મારા વ્હાલા વિદ્યાર્થીઓ મને ખૂબ આનંદ છે કે, આજે મને મારા વતનમાં આવવાનો મોકો મળ્યો છે. ‘વતન એટલે એક એવી જગ્યા, જ્યાં માણસ થેંક્યુ બોલતો નથી, જ્યાં હાથ મિલાવતો નથી, પણ સીધો ભેટી પડે છે.’ આજે હું એ વતનમાં આવ્યો છું જ્યાં રહીને મારા પૂર્વજો સમૃદ્ધ થયા. જેની માટીમાં રમીને મોટો થયો છું એ વતનની માટીને વંદન!

ખમતીધર બનાસકાંઠાની ધરતીને વંદન! ધર્મનો ખરો અર્થ સમજનાર મારા ગામ થરાદને વંદન! જે મારું મોસાળ છે એ – અત્તરની નગરી પાલનપુરને સલામ! આપણી માતા, માતૃભાષા અને માતૃભૂમિ – એ ત્રણેયના ઋણમાંથી માણસ કદી મુક્ત ના થઇ શકે. વતનનું ઋણ ચૂકવવા માટે મહાજનોએ પાલનપુરમાં ‘વિદ્યામંદિર’ ની રચના કરી. આજે વિદ્યામંદિરનું નામ કોહિનૂરની જેમ બધે જ રોશન થઈ રહ્યું છે. અહીંયા ભણેલા અનેક વિદ્યાર્થીઓએ દુનિયામાં નામના મેળવીને પાલનપુરના નામને ઉજળું બનાવ્યું છે.

વિદ્યામંદિર ટ્રસ્ટના પાયામાં માતબર પ્રદાન કરનાર દરેક ટ્રસ્ટીગણને પ્રણામ. અને તમામ દાતાઓને નમન. વિદ્યામંદિરે તેના પંચોતેર વર્ષ પૂરા કર્યા છે. અને ગૌરવની વાત છે કે જૈન શિશુશાળાને પણ ૧૦૦ વર્ષ પુરા થયા છે. મારા તરફથી દરેકને ખૂબ- ખૂબ અભિનંદન.

આજે જયારે હું અહીં આવતો હતો ત્યારે પચાસ વરસ પહેલાંના મારા બાળપણના દિવસો ને વાગોળતો હતો. માતૃભૂમિ પાછા આવવાનું બને તો એ ફીલિંગ્સ જ જુદી હોય છે! વિદ્યાર્થીમિત્રો, આજે હું થોડી એવી વાતો કરું છું જેના વિષે તમે કોઈ નથી જાણતા. આ, મારા બાળપણની – સ્ટુડન્ટ લાઈફની વાતો છે. હું થરાદનો વતની છું. મારું મોસાળ પાલનપુર. હું 6 વર્ષનો હતો ત્યારે અમે ડીસા રહેવા આવેલા. મારા કઝિન્સ આ જ સ્કૂલમાં – વિદ્યામંદિરમાં જ ભણેલા. મારા ફાધરનો ડીસામાં અને મામાનો પાલનપુરમાં વાયદોનો વેપાર. મને બરાબર યાદ છે, હું દર મહિને ડીસાથી પાલનપુર અવારનવાર આવતો.

પાલનપુરના ખોડા લીમડામાં અમારું જૂનું ઘર અને પછી વડીલોએ ગંજબજાર પાસે સંસ્કાર સોસાયટીમાં નવું મકાન બનાવેલું. એ ટાઈમે લક્ષ્મીપુરા રેલવે ફાટક પાસેના મેદાનમાં અમે સર્કસ જોવા આવતા. એક થિયેટર હતું – સિટીલાઈટ્સ. ત્યાં અમે બધા cousins પિક્ચર જોવા જતા. કિર્તી-સ્તંભ પાસે આઈસ્ક્રીમની ફેક્ટરીમાં regular જતાં,દિલ્હી દરવાજા પાસે ગોટીવાળી સોડાની મજા લેતા, મોટી બજારમાં ભીખાભાઈની લારી ઉપર કચોરી ખાતા, અમે પીકનીકમાં બાલારામ પણ જતા. અને ત્યાં મંદિરની પાસે -પહાડમાંથી નીકળતી નદીના ઝરણાંના ધોધ અને પાણીમાં ન્હાતા.

મિત્રો, મારા જીવનના યાદગાર દિવસો મેં અહીં ગાળ્યા છે. હું ૧૧ વરસનો થયો ત્યાં સુધી ડીસામાં રહ્યો. મારા ઘડતરમાં બનાસકાંઠાનો ખૂબ મોટો ફાળો છે. હવે આજે હું તમારી વચ્ચે આવ્યો છું મારી journey વિષે વાત કરવા માટે. કારણ કે, હું માનું છું કે ભારત આજે એવા તબક્કે આવીને ઊભું છે જયારે યંગ ઇન્ડિયા જ ભારતનું ભવિષ્યનિર્માણ કરશે. મને આશા છે કે તમને તમારા લક્ષ્ય નક્કી કરવામાં મારી આ વાતો ઉપયોગી થશે.

My young friends,
Studies demonstrate that the experiences a child has had by the age of ten – and the environment they live in – shape their adulthood.

I believe that the dry and tough living conditions of Banaskatha shape our social behaviour. They unite us through extended family-bonds of trust and dependence. This is evident when I see all of you here today.

If my childhood experiences in Banaskantha shaped my social behaviour, my parents shaped my core values.

I witnessed how hard my mother worked to maintain the harmony, spirit, and mutual respect within our large joint family. Her courage, love, and tenacity held our family together.

On the other hand, my father was involved in what the bankers today describe using a sophisticated term. They call it “forward trades”. In those days, these trades were just oral commitments between two parties.

These commitments never failed and were my initial lessons on the power of trust.

As I look back, I have no hesitation in saying that the tough early days I spent here with my parents – and being a part of a society that stood by each other – shaped my early beliefs. Over time these beliefs became my values.

And today these values of courage, trust, and commitment or સાહસ, વિશ્વાસ અને પ્રતિબદ્ધતા have driven every action the Adani Group takes as a company. They are the foundation on which our Group stands.

My young friends,

Let me now talk about the years that followed after my leaving Banaskantha.

I moved to Ahmedabad, and I spent 4 years completing my secondary education

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 work with my family?

As many youngsters in the audience would agree, the optimism and desire for independence of a teenage boy is hard to contain. All I knew was that – I wanted to do something different – and do it on my own.

Sixteen years of age – purchasing a train ticket at the Ahmedabad railway station – and boarding the Gujarat mail to Mumbai with nothing much in my pocket – had me both excited and nervous.

Once in Mumbai, my cousin Prakashbhai Desai enrolled me at Mahendra brothers, where I started to learn to assort diamonds.

I quickly picked up the business and after working at Mahendra brothers for about 3 years, I left to start my own brokerage in diamond trading at Zaveri Bazar.

મને બરાબર યાદ છે મારી પહેલી કમાણી! I still recall the day I did my first trade with a Japanese buyer. I made a commission of 10,000 rupees.

ખિસ્સામાં ભલે કઈં ના હોય, મનમાં સાહસ અને આત્મવિશ્વાસ હોવો જોઈએ. અને આત્મવિશ્વાસ શેમાં? પોતાની ક્રિએટિવિટી અને કમિટમેન્ટમાં. હું આમાંથી એ શીખ્યો કે શૂન્યમાંથી સર્જન કેવી રીતે થાય.

This was the start of my journey as an entrepreneur.

Another question I often get, is if I have any regrets that I did not go to college. Reflecting on my life and the different turns it took, I – now – do believe that I would have benefitted if I had finished college.

Let me explain.

While my early experiences made me wise, I now realize that formal education rapidly expands one’s knowledge.
અનુભવ માણસને સમજણ આપે છે. શિક્ષણ માણસને જ્ઞાન આપે છે.

To acquire wisdom, one must experience – but – to acquire knowledge, one must study.

These are complementary. And although I will never really know, I do reflect at times that the expansion in my abilities may have been faster had I gone to college.

The fact is, over the years, my respect for education has only grown as I see what the many highly educated professionals have done for the Adani Group.

My young friends,

First-generation entrepreneurs mostly start with a unique advantage – the advantage of having nothing to lose. This belief is their strength. In my own mind, this was liberating.

I had no legacy to follow – but I had the opportunity to create a legacy.

I had nothing to prove to anybody – but had an opportunity to prove to my own self that I could rise.

I had nothing to risk by jumping into uncharted waters. I had no expectations to fulfil except those of my own.
These beliefs became a part of me.

I believe – I am what I am – because I never over evaluate or over think the choices in front of me. I personally find this aspect the most liberating and this liberation is what makes me an entrepreneur.

Going back to my journey – Just as I was turning 19 and settling down in Mumbai, my life took another interesting turn. I was called back by my elder brother Mahasukhbhai to help run a small-scale PVC film factory we had acquired at Ahmedabad.

We used to procure imported raw materials. It was a tough business. In those day, PVC film manufacturing faced great scarcity of raw materials given all the import restrictions.

I would tell others that trying to run a small-scale business that was handicapped by regulations was like rowing a boat on sand. એવું કહેવામાં જરાય અતિશયોક્તિ નથી કે રેતીમાં જ વહાણ હંકારવાનું હતું.

But it is only those that row on sand that are best prepared to reach the vast oceans.

And my first real break came in the year 1985. This happened following the general elections with Shri Rajiv Gandhi becoming the prime minister of the country and liberalising the import policies.

While I had no trading experience, I took advantage of the opportunity and moved swiftly to establish a trading organization. We started importing polymers, to supply to the raw-material-deprived small-scale industries.

This move laid the initial foundation of the Global Trading Business I was soon to build. Crisis and opportunities often go hand in hand. જિંદગીમાં ઓપોર્ચ્યુનિટી સતત તમારી આસપાસ જ હોય છે. જરૂર હોય છે માત્ર એને પારખવાની અને સમયસર તક ઝડપી લેવાની.

In 1991, India was going through its worst foreign exchange reserve crisis. We were, as a nation, down to less than 10 days of foreign exchange.

It was then that Shri. P V Narasimha Rao, the prime minister and his finance minister, Shri Manmohan Singh ji, announced a series of bold decisions including a dramatic depreciation of the rupee to boost exports.

Here again, I made an immediate decision and moved swiftly to establish a full-fledged Global Trading house dealing in polymers, metals, textiles, and agro products.

We became the largest Global trading house in the country within 2 years. I had turned 29 and had a full appreciation of the value of two dimensions that would define everything we did – Scale and Speed.

Till now we had primarily focused on trading. And it was in 1994 we decided that it was time to launch our IPO and hence Adani Exports, which is now called Adani Enterprises, went public.

The IPO was a great hit. It came in strongly at 14 times premium over the face value. Prior to this, I had known very little about public markets but by now had become fully confident of my learning abilities.

I could have taken things easy with this success. But I realized that we were starting to be compared to asset-less financial-type companies and this was hurting the confidence of investors.

While trading business is about short-term profit and loss – infrastructure is about capital-intensive long-term play. Not only are these two different types of businesses, but they also require completely different mind-sets.

It is then that I realised the real value of a company lies in creating assets. This was the phase when we shifted from being traders to being asset builders. This was to be one of the most critical choices we would ever make.

Over the years I have realized you may not always be able to “time things right” but your tenacity can “right time things”. And our third big break was the result of a series of right-timed opportunities.

And the opportunity came in 1995, when the Gujarat government decided to develop its coastline.

It was around this same time that the global commodities trader Cargill approached us with a proposal to source the salt produced across the Kutch Coastline.

To cut a long, interesting story short, the partnership did not proceed. But we were left with about 40,000 acres of marshy land to harvest salt and an approval to build a captive jetty at Mundra for the export of salt.

Following the formalization of the ports policy, the Gujarat government chose us as their partner to build out a full-fledged commercial port in Mundra.

વૈજ્ઞાનિકોનું કહેવું છે કે ભમરો ઉડવા માટે અક્ષમ છે પણ ભમરો તે વાતથી અજાણ છે અને તેના માટે જ તે ઉડી શકે છે. અમે પોર્ટ બનાવવા વિશે કંઈ જાણતા નહતા. કદી પોર્ટ બિઝનેસનો એકડો પણ નહોતો ઘૂંટ્યો. કદી કોઈએ કન્સ્ટ્રક્શન પણ કર્યું નહોતું. એક ઈંટ પણ કદી ચણી નહોતી અને અહીં તો મોટું પોર્ટ બનાવવાનું હતું. And the rest is history. મુન્દ્રા બન્યું અમારી કર્મ-ભૂમિ! The next opportunity quickly followed when the Gujarat Government announced the SEZ policy in 2005. The marshy land around our port that was considered useless, now became an asset. And we again grabbed this opportunity.

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

મારા બાળપણમાં એક વાર સ્કૂલમાંથી અમને કંડલા પોર્ટ લઇ ગયા હતા. ત્યારે મેં જિંદગીમાં પહેલી વાર કોઈ પોર્ટ જોયું હતું. આ વાતનો અહીં ઉલ્લેખ કરવાનું કારણ એ છે કે, મને એમ લાગે છે કે નાનપણમાં સાચી અને સારી વસ્તુઓના મનમાં પડેલા બીજ, આગળ જતાં યોગ્ય વાતાવરણ મળે તો વિરાટ સંભાવનાઓનું કારણ બની શકે છે. વિદ્યાર્થીકાળમાં જોવાય એટલું જુઓ, ફરાય એટલું ફરો, વંચાય એટલું વાંચો. કરેલું ક્યારેય એળે જતું નથી, હંમેશા ઉગી નીકળે છે.

Today, I can confidently say that the real growth of Mundra is just starting. It now holds the potential to become one of the world’s top integrated industrial parks in the years to come.

My young friends,

Tenacity and opportunities are two wheels that cycle together. And it is the tenacity that gives us the confidence to step into unknown waters. And in these waters often exists the largest of opportunities.

The more you complete these cycles, the more your confidence and ability to make bigger bets. And the bigger the bets you successfully execute, the stronger is your confidence and ability to make even bigger bets.

It is our adoption of these principles 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 largest solar power company
• We will be the world’s largest renewable company by 2030
• We are the largest airport operator in India with 25% of passenger traffic and 40% of air cargo.
• We are the largest Ports and Logistics company in India with 30% national market share.
• We are India’s largest integrated energy player. We span electricity generation, transmission, and distribution, LNG and LPG terminals, city gas and piped gas distribution.
• We are the country’s second largest cement manufacturer.
• We are the highest valued FMCG company following the IPO of Adani Wilmar.
• We have declared our path forward in new sectors that include data centres, super apps, industrial clouds, aerospace and defence, metals, and petrochemicals.
• Our market cap is at over 225 billion dollars and has grown faster than any company ever in India.

My young friends
India will be the land of massive opportunities over the next 30 years. 40 years. 50 years. A democracy whose time has come cannot be stopped and India’s time has arrived. This is your new India. This is your time.  Our country is – and will increasingly be – a land full of incredible opportunities. The Adani Group is just one manifestation of India’s entrepreneurship success story. I started this journey when I was just 16. I learnt that while the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, it is rare that any entrepreneurship journey is able to follow this straight line.

Entrepreneurship is about 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. It is this desire to be back on your feet that defines an entrepreneur – and it defined me. I firmly believe that India holds the potential to build a 100 Adani Groups. And there could be no better place than India to be an entrepreneur today. What we do in the short term will look like a marathon. What we achieve in the long run will look like a sprint. Therefore, in closing I would like to leave you with some of my thoughts that I hope you keep in mind. You will be in your prime when India is in its prime. And India will be in its prime because you will be in your prime. This is the time for you to dream big. You are India’s future, and no future is made by incremental thinking.

As an entrepreneur, I can only tell you that in the days to come – as you go into the new India – you must never be in a situation where you are disappointed by the things that you did not dare to do. Spread your wings and be like the kites of this Uttarayan. Remember, kites always rise – not with the wind – but against it. Fly, Explore, Dream, Discover. દરેક માણસની તમન્ના ઊંચે જવાની, પ્રગતિ કરવાની હોય છે. પણ જો બીજાના જ પતંગ પર સતત ધ્યાન હોય તો પોતાનો પતંગ બરાબર ના ચગે. ખરો પતંગબાજ હોય તે પોતાની પતંગ પર જ આંખ કેન્દ્રિત કરે અને ઓપોર્ચુનિટીનો પવન કઈ દિશાનો છે તે બરાબર પારખે.

Be grateful! Humility is the biggest strength an individual can have. Humility is not thinking less of yourself – it is thinking of yourself a little less. And humility comes from reading, studying, and listening. These attributes teach us how little we actually know. Therefore, put your heart and soul into your learning and studies. Learn all you can – you will never regret it. The day you stop learning, you start losing your humility.

વિનમ્રતાની કિન્ના બરાબર બાંધ્યા વગર કોઈ પતંગ ના ચગે.

The search for success will come at a price. The greatest success is never – in not falling – but is in your ability to rise after every fall. This strength will be the signature of your resilience.

દરેક પતન પછી આગળ વધવાની ક્ષમતા – આ તાકાત તમારી સ્થિતિ સ્થાપકતાની સાબિતી આપે છે. પતંગોનું ચગવું – કપાવું એ તો ચાલ્યા કરે, પાર્ટ ઓફ ગેઇમ છે ! મહત્વનું છે દોરી પર કાબૂ.

And finally – learn to develop empathy. Empathy binds humanity. Empathy gives hope to humanity. Empathy gives purpose to humanity. The great gift of being human is that we have the power of empathy. In this context, the most significant day in my life was the 24th of June last year. It was the day I turned 60. The significance was less about turning 60 but more about the decision my family made to contribute Rs.60,000 crores to the Adani Foundation for enhancing healthcare, education, and skill-development all across India.

Therefore, the best way each of you can make Vidyamandir proud is to ensure that you align your sense of purpose with your sense of compassion. My young friends – I hope my journey inspires you to want to be 100 times of what I have been fortunate to be able to achieve. It is not about one Gautam Adani. Our dream must be to produce hundreds of Gautam Adanis from this land. If I – as the son of this very land could have learnt to fly high – you can fly higher.

સપનાઓના આકાશમાં તમારી સફળતાનો પતંગ ઊંચે-ઊંચે ઉડે એવી તમને સૌને શુભકામનાઓ.. ઓલ ધ બેસ્ટ.