Adani Group has scaled back its ambitions in the digital space, folding its standalone app Adani One into its airport holdings division, according to people familiar with the matter. The move follows an internal probe into alleged mismanagement, which led to the departure of Chief Digital Officer Nitin Sethi and several staff. Despite investing nearly $100 million into the platform, the all-in-one app—launched in December 2022 to enable travel bookings across Adani's seven airports—struggled to gain traction and remains far from profitability.
The restructuring could signal a broader strategic shift as Adani redirects focus toward its core businesses in energy and infrastructure. Modeled after China's WeChat and Douyin, Adani One had once aspired to reach one in three Indians by 2030 and attracted 30 million users by March 2023. However, execution hurdles have mirrored challenges faced by other Indian conglomerates like Tata's Neu and Reliance's MyJio, both of which have wrestled with poor user engagement and fragmented experiences in the country's elusive super app race.
The decision reflects the broader difficulty for legacy giants to succeed in consumer internet ventures, which often demand agility, user-centric design, and constant iteration—traits typically more native to startups. While Adani may revisit digital initiatives in the future, any new efforts would likely be more restrained and reliant on partnerships, sources noted, highlighting a potential lesson learned from its first push into the tech frontier.
