International Desk

India’s rival billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani have collaborated for the first time by signing contract for a power project in Madhya Pradesh, according to the country’s media outlets.

Under the new agreement, Ambani's Reliance Industries has picked up a 26% stake in the power project owned by Gautam Adani, and would use the plants’ 500MW of electricity for captive use.

Western and Indian media have often pitted Adani and Ambani against each other in terms of business competition. The two have also been battling it out for the title of Asia's richest person for several years now.

Ambani is now Asia’s richest person, while Adani is placed second on Forbes and Hurun lists. However, Bloomberg put Adani at the top spot with Ambani following close behind in its January update on Asia’s elite club.

But the two billionaires, both hailing from Gujarat, have rarely clashed head-on in business activities, and away from business have even tried to maintain amicable ties. Notably, Adani was present at the pre-wedding celebrations of Ambani's youngest son, Anant, earlier this month.

The duo were expected to clash during India’s 5G spectrum auction, but unlike Ambani’s top bid worth over 88,000 Indian rupees, Adani spent only 212 crore rupees for the 26 GHz band, which is not for public networks.

With Ambani's interests spanning oil and gas to retail and telecom and Adani's focus on infrastructure spanning sea ports to airports, coal and mining, they rarely crossed each other's path except in the clean energy business where the two have announced multi-billion investments.

Adani has previously expressed his company's aim to be the largest renewable energy producer in the world, while Ambani's Reliance is building four gigafactories at Jamnagar in Gujarat – one each for solar panels, batteries, green hydrogen, and fuel cells.

Adani is also building three gigafactories for manufacturing solar modules, wind turbines and hydrogen electrolysers.