G M RAO and Family

G.M. Rao moved from jute to sugar to power to airports. The Delhi and Hyderabad airports are where the journey landed.

G.M. Rao started as a jute mill owner in Rajam, Andhra Pradesh, and made his entry into infrastructure through a sugar mill and then a power plant in the 1990s, at a point when private participation in India's core sectors was newly permitted. The GMR Group won the concession to develop and operate the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi and, later, the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, two of the busiest aviation gateways in the country, together handling over 100 million passengers annually.

Airport development under a public-private partnership model requires navigating regulatory complexity, managing long construction timelines, financing large capital expenditure against uncertain future passenger volumes, and then operating the finished asset to commercial standards across a 30-year concession period. GMR has done this at a scale and quality that few Indian infrastructure developers have matched. The group has since extended its airport expertise internationally, with projects in the Philippines and Greece. For millions of travellers each year, the Delhi and Hyderabad airports are the first and last experience of the country.