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Deepdive: So, as per news reports of last week, it’s set to be Adani vs Ambani in petrochems 🙏🙏 But, anyone with simple reasoning capabilities would know, that this was a case of exaggeration and clickbait. Let me explain with numbers and facts. .. So, what is Adani building? It’s building a ginormous $4bn PVC project near the Mundra port in Gujarat’s Kutch. This was earlier supposed to be live in 2026, and had also received a Rs 14k crore loan from SBI for this (as per news reports). But, in January (6 months ago), it brought in Thailand-based Indorama Group (led by an Indian origin family) to lead, this project in a joint venture fashion (Valor Petrochemicals). And even when this JV was formed, Adani group’s PR mentioned that it would operationalise the 1mn ton PVC capacity by 2026 under first phase, with another 1mn ton capacity to be operationalised within a year of that. And now, the deadline has been moved by two years to for the first phase, and no deadline has been mentioned for second phase. .. First up, no body in media has shared any of this in their latest reports. - no mention of deadlines having been moved - no mention of company not sharing any deadlines for second phase (unlike before) - no mention of Adani building this whole thing in a joint venture with Indorama .. So, what has media published? That Adani’s building this with 2028 deadline for first phase, which will make it a direct rival to Mukesh Ambani. That’s journalism? Heck. .. But, more importantly, what’s sad is the truth that it’s not even going to be Adani vs Ambani! India consumes 4mn tons of PVC a year, of which only 1.5mn tons is domestically produced. - And of that too, Reliance accounts for just half, at 0.75mn tons - Thus, even if we add Adani’s phase-1 capacity of a million tons, we would have an import dependency of 1.5mn tons - And if we go as far as to include the 2nd phase capacity too, we will still be import-dependent And this is all assuming that the demand for PVC won’t grow, which it definitely will. .. Thus, in that context, what do we learn? Two things. 1 - That it’s not at all about Adani vs Ambani. Rather, in this case, it’s about Adani+ Ambani helping India curb imports of a key material. And that’s a big win for India! 2 - India really needs better business journalists and newspapers