The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

By Una Galani

HONG KONG, Sep 3 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Gautam Adani is known as the "man who owns half of India". Now, after surviving a bruising short-seller attack at the start of 2023 and then a U.S. Department of Justice probe, he has his set his sights on expanding his $180 billion infrastructure empire not just at home but overseas, too. How far Asia’s richest man can reach will depend less on capital and more on perceptions of the group and geopolitics. But his biggest opportunities are within India’s borders.

The grand ambitions of the softly spoken 64-year-old industrialist are striking. With a U.S. case centred on bribery allegations against him dropped in August, Adani is embarking on one of the biggest investment drives by an Indian company. It is essentially a bet that the controversy that once threatened his first-generation family business is beginning to fade.

Gautam Adani's investment plans are critical to India's growth. His group of companies intends to spend over 2 trillion rupees ($21 billion) in the year to March. That’s 30% higher than last year's outlay, which was already equivalent to almost one-third of the capital expenditure of non-financial firms in the country's benchmark Nifty 50 Index .NSEI.

Fresh from opening the Vizhinjam port in Kerala ? India’s first deep water transshipment port - and launching the Navi Mumbai International Airport, the billionaire is pushing into industries from nuclear power to aerospace. His most audacious project may be the redevelopment of Mumbai's sprawling Dharavi settlement, an undertaking that could transform one of Asia's largest slums into a modern urban district.

Together, the projects reveal how Adani’s group, headquartered in a 600-acre self-developed township known as Adani Shantigram in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is at the centre of India's next phase of economic development. Crucially, it underscores the vast and growing opportunities available to it within the country as local governments and domestic investors warm up to the group.

Local Indian states from the poorest in Bihar to those in the historically neglected Northeast increasingly want the multi-decade development - and jobs - Adani projects can create. What was once a small agrarian trading town, Gujarat’s Mundra now hosts India's largest commercial port as well as Adani's solar panel and wind turbine factories. Components made there are transported more than 100 kilometres across the state to the desert salt flats of Khavda, near the Pakistan border, where TotalEnergies-backed TTEF.PA Adani Green Energy ADNA.NS is building a 30-gigawatt renewable energy complex that it expects to be the world's largest.

Ordinary Indians are also now more invested in Adani’s success than they were earlier. Domestic mutual funds that avoided his tightly held conglomerate - even before Hindenburg Research accused it of stock manipulation in 2023, allegations the group denies ? are buying. Regulatory filing show they own nearly 7% of Adani’s flagship company, Adani Enterprises ADEL.NS, up from 1.19% in December 2022.

In June, Adani went so far as to describe a 250-billion-rupee ($2.6 billion) rights issue by Adani Enterprises, its first in 15 years, as a "referendum on our credibility" and a "mandate to help keep building India". The group did not need the cash as much as it wanted proof that a diverse group of local investors ? and not just handpicked global institutions ? were prepared to bankroll its next phase of growth.

In reflects how, across the board, perceptions of the tycoon are shifting. Although Gautam Adani remains a target of criticism by India's top political opposition party for his close association with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and rapid expansion under his administration, the view in financial circles has changed. Bankers say the conglomerate is no longer a wager solely on the government's survival. Foreign companies are comfortable with the risks too: Alphabet’s Google GOOGL.O is partnering with Adani to build data centres.

The reason is partly practical. India needs vast amounts of capital to build roads, ports, airports, power grids and industrial infrastructure, but relatively few companies possess the balance sheet, political connections and appetite for regulatory complexity required to execute projects on such a scale. Where other Indian infrastructure conglomerates have stumbled under heavy borrowings, Adani has avoided such difficulties.

Against such vast opportunities at home, Adani's growing overseas ambitions, though often dovetailing with his conglomerate’s broader strategy, appear opportunistic and harder to realise.

On top of the $10 billion the tycoon pledged to invest in the U.S. after Donald Trump was re-elected in November 2024, the same month the DOJ charges were unsealed, Adani has his eye on Associated British Ports as two Canadian pension funds look to exit. A potential deal for a controlling stake could value the UK’s largest port operator at more than $13 billion. The Indian group is also among the bidders for Sicily's Catania airport.

Owning a network of ports would allow Adani to offer its shipping customers end-to-end logistics and help it to gather cargo and trade intelligence that can help it to forecast demand and optimise capacity. It would strengthen its ability to service the India-Middle East-Europe Economic-Corridor, the Western-backed trade route designed as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road initiative.

Much of Adani's overseas expansion, including ports in Israel, Sri Lanka and Tanzania, already aligns with India's strategic interests. The push abroad is also widely viewed as helping New Delhi project economic influence across key maritime routes; its Australian operations, meanwhile, were built around supplying thermal coal to the Indian market.

A successful acquisition of Associated British Ports would evoke a landmark acquisition by another Asian tycoon. In 1991, Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing bought Britain's Felixstowe port, using it as a springboard to build the global ports empire that CK Hutchison 0001.HK is now trying to sell in a multi-billion-dollar deal to BlackRock BLK.N and Mediterranean Shipping Company. Yet building a big global empire today is difficult, even without the perception issues the tycoon will have to grapple with.

Thirty years ago, infrastructure assets attracted less political scrutiny. Hong Kong was a British colony and Li's investments were viewed through a commercial lens. Governments today regard ports, airports and energy networks as strategic assets, making the identity and reputation of owners and operators far more important. Adani only won final approval for its Australia coal project in 2019 after a decade-long struggle with officials and environmental protesters. And geopolitical considerations are unavoidable: Kenya picked a Chinese firm to upgrade its biggest airport two years after Adani’s U.S. indictment derailed his bid.

To be sure, Adani has reasons to be optimistic about his current UK ambitions. The new trade agreement between Britain and India reflects a broader push for closer economic ties, while Western governments are looking for infrastructure investors to help reduce or remove any need for Chinese capital.

Still, this opportunity comes with greater scrutiny. Adani's challenge is no longer proving he can build at scale or that he can maintain financial discipline; it’s more that he will have to convince foreign governments that he can repeat his infrastructure success in the West, that his past problems won’t come back to haunt him, and that India is a desirable partner. Even if Adani succeeds, his projects back home will dwarf what he achieves abroad.

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(Editing by Antony Currie; Production by Aditya Srivastav)

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Keywords: ADANI-EXPANSION/INDIA-BREAKINGVIEWS