The Adani Group is attempting a three-pronged workforce transformation aimed at creating a younger, more diverse and leaner organization, with artificial intelligence taking over routine tasks.
While chairman Gautam Adani (63) is overseeing efforts to outsource certain roles to external vendors, his 39-year-old son, Karan Adani, managing director of Adani Ports & SEZ Ltd, is leading the push for a younger, more diverse workforce. Group chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh has been tasked with implementing an AI-led cobotic workforce model.
The stakes are significant.
First, the organizational overhaul could reshape the future of the Ahmedabad-based conglomerate's 115,000 employees across businesses spanning ports, power, airports, cement, logistics and consumer services. Second, the outcome could influence hiring, training and workforce strategies well beyond the group, offering a blueprint for large Indian companies to navigate the AI era.
The cobotic workforce model
AI bots are expected to take over many routine and clerical processes across the group's businesses, freeing up employees to focus on more context-specific and higher-value work, according to four people aware of the group's plans.
The group is also developing a cobotic performance management system that would use score-based employee evaluations, the people added. The proposed system would replace the current approach, which relies largely on manager feedback.
“If it is transactional work, there is no need for it to happen in the traditional way anymore,” said one of the four executives cited above. “So this is where you embed AI agents.”
Transactional work refers to repetitive, rules-based tasks such as data entry, invoice generation, or payroll calculation, where the rules do not change based on context. For instance, calculating an employee's monthly salary requires applying fixed formulas to predefined variables such as base pay, tax slab, and attendance. The outcome does not change based on whether the employee is a fresher or a senior.
For processes that require additional context, the group is planning to embed AI agents with some human intervention. Meanwhile, for complex tasks such as strategy, sales, and client management, humans will remain in the lead, with assistance from AI agents, the executive said.
The outcome of Adani's experiments could have implications far beyond its 10 listed companies, as businesses across corporate India are likely to track learnings from one of the country's largest employers.
“The future of AI in Indian conglomerates will be defined by how fast they convert operational scale into data advantage, with human oversight. Get the talent and governance right, and AI becomes a national competitiveness lever. Get it wrong, and it’s just another cost line,” said Ratna Gupta, a senior partner at executive search firm ABC Consultants.
While many companies are experimenting with AI, implementing it across the conglomerate's vast and diverse businesses presents a far greater challenge.
Singh, who is leading the AI push, has been given the additional responsibility of heading the human resources (HR), learning and development (L&D), administration, global capability centre (GCC) internal audit, and IT functions starting 1 April. Group chief people officer Sudhir Mattoo now reports to Singh.
The group has distributed the oversight of business functions among the next generation of promoters, and Karan has been made responsible for human resources.
The group declined to participate in the story.
More diversity, fewer layers
The group is also focusing on increasing gender diversity and reducing the average age of the workforce, the people said.
It is prioritizing the recruitment and promotion of younger professionals over more experienced hands, and setting up a leadership and development programme to fast-track the careers of promising talent.
Only three group companies—Adani Green Energy Ltd, Adani Power Ltd and Adani Total Gas Ltd—disclose the average age of their workforce, which stands at 33.1 years, 38 years and 35.3 years, respectively.
Meanwhile, women accounted for only 5% of the group's workforce at the end of 2025-26, showed Mint’s analysis of the annual reports of all listed arms.
To address this imbalance, Adani companies are stepping up efforts to hire more women. For instance, Adani Power, where women accounted for less than 1% of the workforce in 2024-25, improved that ratio to just under 3% by the end of FY26 by hiring female graduate engineer trainees (14.5% of the total hires) during the year, according to its annual report.
Lastly, the group is moving to a three-layer corporate structure, compressing middle management into a flat layer to speed up decision-making, Mint reported on 18 May.
It is also moving towards a deep vendor ecosystem, where numerous jobs, such as manufacturing and logistics, that are presently done in-house will be outsourced. A large number of on-site employees have been moved to the rolls of such vendors in recent months, while many more are expected to go through a similar transition. In fact, the Adani Green Energy workforce shrank by more than three-fourths in 2025-26 to fewer than 1,000 people, the company noted in its annual report.
A complete overhaul
Together, the ports-to-cement conglomerate has introduced more than half a dozen new initiatives that directly and indirectly affect recruitment, the nature of work, and career progression for its vast workforce.
On one hand, promising talent could see rapid career advancement. But on the other hand, many employees will end up working with a vendor that may not offer the same career path or safety net as Adani.
While the new initiatives are aimed at keeping the conglomerate up to date with best global practices, the numerous changes in rapid succession have made many employees nervous, according to conversations with past and present employees and industry executives.
For instance, many employees were miffed when, in April, the group rolled out salary hikes using a formula that relied on the previous year’s reviews among other parameters, as the new AI-based system is yet to be implemented, the people said.
At the Hazira Port in Gujarat, crane operators who were recently moved onto a vendor's payroll went on strike, local media reported. Among other things, they were upset about missing out on the bonus given to Adani Ports' employees after the company crossed the milestone of handling 500 million tonnes of cargo in a single year.
“Any new initiative will have teething issues,” said another company executive.
The Adani Group promoters have taken cognizance of this and are visiting work sites for direct communication with employees to boost confidence, this executive said. “The chairman and senior leadership are personally leading these efforts for effective implementation at the ground level.”
