What Adani’s deeper B2C play means for India’s super app universe

Gautam Adani’s conglomerate, worth over $200 billion, has been largely built on infrastructure, power, and energy verticals. Now, though, it is pushing deeper and deeper into India’s consumer ecosystem. That is an already crowded space, with Adani’s archrivals—Reliance Industries, Tata Group, and Aditya Birla Group—enjoying a head start of several years. 

Asia’s second-richest man, however, is not one to shy away from competition. Adani’s consumer play is built on top of its existing business-to-business (B2B) verticals, mainly infrastructure (airports), and seeks to grant convenience on a platter to users.

After launching the Adani One super app in December 2022, Adani Digital Labs, the wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd., has ramped up its financial services offering by partnering with ICICI Bank and VISA to roll out a co-branded credit card. It comes on the back of media reports that the Adani Group is also in talks with Paytm and government-backed ONDC to go deeper into fintech and e-commerce—the two central pillars of India’s digital economy—respectively. 

Interestingly, the new financial product also pits Adani One, which closed the last fiscal (FY24) with 30 million users, directly against Tata Neu [HDFC Bank card], Reliance [SBI RuPay card], and Aditya Birla Finance [ABC Flex AU Bank card], with each having a similar product out in the market already.  

Unlike the others, though, the Adani One ICICI Bank Credit Card is a travel-focused card that rewards Adani One app users on flight, hotel, bus, train, and cab bookings, duty-free shopping, airport dining, valet parking, and lounge visits at Adani-owned airports across the country. Users can also earn reward points on grocery spends, utility payments (at Adani CNG pumps and Adani Electricity), and international transactions on the app.