[CC may contain inaccuracies] Jeet Adani is the youngest son of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani. As part of the tycoon's succession plan, the 26 year old engineer is overseeing the running of seven airports across the country, including the one in India's financial capital, Mumbai. The Adani Group is also building a brand new airport for the city at a cost of $2 billion. Along with airports, Jeet is responsible for the defence business while also looking after the group's digital initiatives. The youngest of the next generation of Adani leaders is being groomed to run big parts of an empire that's been rocked in recent years. In early 2023, just a few years after Jeet joined the family business, a report published by short seller Hindenburg Research accused the company of fraud and share price manipulation. It sparked a 50 billion meltdown in shares of group companies. The Adanis have denied the allegations and their shares have recovered, but they're still dealing with the fallout. Bloomberg's Anto Antony spoke exclusively with Jeet Adani and asked him how the group's strategies have changed. You had just joined the business when the Hindenburg report came out. How did it affect you personally and what role did you play in that crisis situation? I was definitely .... personally speaking a very stressful and tough time, you know, emotions were high. But I think the most important thing that was on my mind definitely was what can I do to support, obviously, the family? But more than that, how do I support the larger family, which is the employees? Because the biggest risk that you run in times like these is demotivation. People, you know, sort of losing hope and to make sure that everyone is motivated, everyone knows that what we are doing is for a greater purpose. It's for we're making real impact and we continue day on day on because these things, they happen, they come, they go. But, you know, we don't want to lose motivations. Some of the investigations or probes or allegations are still an overhang on the group. How are you assuaging the investors concerns in these times? I think, you know, and this is based on some of the interactions that I've also had with investors over the past couple of months. I think there is a clear understanding with the investors that, you know, the Hindenburg report everything that was said and alleged against us was sort of just rehashing all the things again. And a lot of investors really appreciated the kind of communication that we've done over the last 14, 18 months. At the end of the day, not a single investor's query will be left unanswered. We were proactively reaching out to investors after each and every report or article or anything that was coming out. And with all of the performance from the financial side also, they were very clear that, you know, look, this is a very good asset. All of the companies, they have the strong infrastructure assets and the leadership team has given us enough confidence by communicating with us enough. I think that's kind of helped actually investors realize that, you know, to look beyond it and actually look at the asset, look at the leadership team, what kind of cash we are generating and what what kind of growth we're doing. You're seeing construction of a $2.1 billion airport in the outskirts of Mumbai. Now, as I understand, the phase one construction is on time. My question is, is it too little too late? Because the way at which the expansion, the aviation market in India is expanding, would you have to, like work on the remaining phases at a much faster pace than earlier envisaged. No, absolutely. I think you're right. You know, if you look historically, when the initial privatization of Bombay and Delhi have been together in 2006, Bombay as an airport was actually larger than Delhi and it was growing at the same pace as Delhi was growing, but it hit the road block because it has a capacity limitation, being a single runway airport, Delhi kept growing is now about 75 to 80 million passengers per annum, The latent demand of Bombay as the city has not stop growing. You know, people still want to fly. The ability to consume, ability to spend on travel is still very, very high and is still growing at the same rate. It's just that they don't have the the option or they don't have the infrastructure to be able to take flights. So definitely, when it comes to your question on too little, too late. Yes. The good thing is we're getting there. You know, based on the initial conversations and what our forecasts for the first year itself, once we start operations, will be pretty much exhausting 60, 70% of the capacity of the new airport. And given that it takes anywhere from two and a half to three years from start of a new project to, you know, commissioning, we will immediately need to start phase two of another 30 million passengers as soon as we finish phase one. You're overseeing the group's defense business. Now, India is a country with the world's second largest standing army. What scope are you seeing in the sector and how are you going about it? We primarily are focusing on areas where we think we can make a significant impact. That's why we are not using large capital projects like submarines or fighter aircraft, which we were in the past. But we've sort of redone our strategy. Our strategy is focused on three things. The first thing is around unmanned systems. So unmanned aerial vehicles, ground vehicles, water and submarine vehicles. Our first milestone we hit earlier this year when we delivered the first drawn to the armed forces. This was a MALE category drone. We have the capability to actually manufacture and design all the way from MALE category to micro robocopters, which, you know, small cpters. You can use it for agricultural purposes as well. And the second area around our defense ecosystem is on small arms. Small arms is very important because we see that based on the current equipment that the Indian armed forces have, you know, a lot of modernization needs to happen. And we're very lucky that, you know, we've been able to, you know, win contracts to supply to them with an indigenization number of over 80%. And our target is by the end of the contract, we want to have 200% levels of indigenisation. So the entire value capture will happen within India. And the third part of our portfolio and on defence is on ammunition. We are the only private sector ammunition manufacturer in India. You know, on the small calibre side we manufacture and it's up and running already. We manufacture over a couple of hundred million rounds a year which will be able to serve about half of the yearly needs of the Indian armed forces. And we are also expanding into medium and large calibers that sort of ties up the entire portfolio. Definitely, when you look at skill ones, all of this is run up and running at 100% capacity. This would be a very large scale business in itself as we actually are building out this capacity. We are also looking at new opportunities around defence where, you know, cybersecurity, looking at systems, emission systems, not just on manufacturing and as an OEM one drone or one equipment, but actually tying the entire thing together into a battlefield machine system that sort of more future looking. And then you have what we are manufacturing today. So at this young age you are running some of the big businesses in the region. At the same time, the chairman, who is in his early sixties and the age at which many people contemplate retirement, he's putting in 18 hour workdays. Do you think he feels confident or you as G-2 feel confident that if he decides to take a break, the G-2 will be able to handle the business? Yeah, I think on the lighter side, I don't think he's going to be taking a break anytime soon. For us, when we sit together, as G-2 the most important thing around this is self-realization. I think we've we all realize as a group of four of us, that to put together our capabilities are not going to be able to match up to his because he's, you know, the once in a generation kind of entrepreneur. But what we can do better is with the access and resources that we have, how do we train ourselves in aspects that we can control better And we've identified on being successful. You need three things. You need the right people. You need to be able to handle the right people, and then you need to manage risk. If you're able to do these three things as a family successfully, definitely will be able to grow. I don't think all of us are there yet in, you know, in terms of capability on these three. But this is where we are working with the right mentors to train us.