TLI Staff
New Delhi: After Sidharath Kapur, another senior executive from GMR group who joined airports division of Adani Enterprises has quit.
Manish Sinha was Chief Operating Officer (COO) at GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL) had joined Adani group as Chief of Ahmedabad airport.
Both the two executives put in their papers barely months after joining the Ahmedabad based business conglomerate which made their entry into airport sector with a bang winning the contract for all the six Airports Authority of India (AAI)-run airports on offer under public private partnership (PPP) basis.
Industry sources said that the two executives could have left due to unrealistic pressure given that Adani bagged the airport projects quoting very high revenue share per passenger.
Paying big bucks to win the bid for Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangaluru and Guwahati airports Adani Enterprises offered Rs 177, Rs 174, Rs 171, Rs 168, Rs 115 and Rs 160 respectively, as revenue per passenger to AAI in exchange for a 50-year concession agreement to run these airports.
The diversified Adani group’s bids were way ahead of rivals and even established airport players like GMR in most cases. Many insiders believe that the bids were very aggressive.
“Obviously, executives would be given big targets to earn enough money. This is the reason people have quit. Most likely, one more exit would happen shortly,” the source quoted above said.
Both executives cited personal reasons for quitting in their resignations.
Sidharath Kapur was the first high-profile GMR executive to join Adani Enterprises. An airport sector veteran, Kapur is credited with playing one of the key roles in GMR’s ambitions in the airport business. He was instrumental in making successful bids for Male airport in the Maldives, and raising debt of over Rs 20,000 crore as part of the expansion plan.
He was the group CFO for airport sector at GMR group.
Manish Sinha was also in the CXO league with 27 years in airport management, strategic planning, project co-ordination, business development and stakeholder management.