The Adani Group has made a one-time payment of Rs 2,440 crore to the Airport Authority of India (AAI) for the possession of six airports after it won the bids. Chairman of AAI, Sanjeev Kumar, said that the one-time payment had been made against the capital work in progress and investments in regulated assets. He added that the authority had repaid some working capital loans from this payment that it took last year to repay salaries. AAI had to borrow money to pay salaries to the employees and took loans of nearly Rs 1,500 crore from the State Bank of India (SBI) to meet the requirements of working capital in 2020-21 after getting hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that AAI had witnessed a loss of Rs 1,962 crore in 2020-21. The authority has repaid Rs 600 crore of the working capital loans of Rs 500 crore in April to May and Rs 100 crore in July. AAI has availed Rs 850 crore, and Rs 650 crore is still available at AAI. The repayments were made from the one-time payment received from Adani. Adani has won airports in Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Guwahati, Lucknow, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram through competitive bid announcements in 2019. The company operated its airports under Adani Airports Holding Limited (AAHL) and its Mumbai airport from GVK Group. It holds 74% in the airport company and the remaining 26% is with AAI. As per an official source, Adani Group focuses on creating airport business assets beyond aviation to complement the business from its air passengers. Sources told the media that with the current aviation strategy and travel restrictions, the company aims at capitalising the airports by which the company can operate its aviation business with urban developments, entertainment facilities, e-commerce, logistics, smart city developments, aviation-dependent industries and innovative business concepts. Image Source Also read: Adani takes up O&M of Thiruvananthapuram International Airport