Dcm Shriram-Corporate-Story.Pdf
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Corporate Reports BUSINESS INDIA u THE MAGAZINE OF THE CORPORATE WORLD Ajay, Ajit, Vikram: empire, DCM Ltd, taking their rich straddling sugar, legacy forward Blazing its own trail chemicals, vanaspati, pottery, fans, sewing A fulfilling silver anniversary for an over-one-century- machines, electric motors old company and capacitors. Knighted by King George VI in 1941 for his high enter- prise, Sir Shri Ram valued educa- t has been a remarkable 25 years accountant in a firm of bankers and tion and culture alongside business, for DCM Shriram Limited (DSL), realtors, who had neither money nor establishing the prestigious Shri Ram Ithe New Delhi-headquartered knowledge of machines, but a big College of Commerce in 1932, Shri conglomerate with a legacy span- dream for a cotton mill in his city Ram Institute for Industrial Research ning 107 years. of Delhi. Struck by Gopal Rai’s idea, in 1950 and Lady Shri Ram College DCM Shriram was spun out of a a group of city businessman met in in 1956, as also the Shri Ram Cen- four-way reconstitution in 1990 of 1888 at the house of Rai Bahadur tre for Performing Arts, a landmark the Shri Ram family’s businesses that Lala Ram Kishan Das, a meeting that in New Delhi’s theatre circuit. Music had their origin in the textile mill led to the registration of the mill was his passion and that led him to of Lala Shri Ram, the patriarch. The in 1889. Rai Bahadur was made its learn under Pt Ravi Shankar. late Shri Ram, whose 132nd birth chairman and Gopal Rai tasked with DCM charted spectacular growth anniversary was commemorated on the maintenance of accounts. Gopal and soon became a household name 27 April, was a 25-year-old youth Rai’s passing in 1906 paved the way and a trusted brand in the coun- of modest means in 1909 when he for his nephew to join three years try, as also one of the earliest joint joined the Delhi Cloth & General later. stock companies and among the top Mills Co, northern India’s first tex- Having an entrepreneurial pluck, five private enterprises in India by tile factory. Shri Ram soon acquired the mill, 1970. Unfortunately it was also riven The mill had come into being at renamed it Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM), by one of the earliest fraternal con- the initiative of his tau (father’s elder and within years diversified his textile flicts of corporate India, with fis- brother), Lala Gopal Rai, a simple business into a blue chip industrial sures cleaving the second generation u 58 u JUNE 20-JULY 3, 2016 BUSINESS INDIA u THE MAGAZINE OF THE CORPORATE WORLD Corporate Reports itself, led by Shri Ram’s sons Bharat Ram and Charat Ram, their third brother, Murli Dhar, having died, along with his wife, in an air crash in 1949. This debility exposed the com- pany in 1986 to one of the earliest hostile takeover bids in the country, by London-based businessman Lord Swraj Paul, who backed off only at the intercession of then Prime Min- ister Rajiv Gandhi. Under a Scheme of Arrangement approved by its shareholders and creditors, and also by a Delhi High Court order, DCM Ltd on 1 April 1990 stood quadri-partitioned into DCM Ltd, DCM Shriram Industries Ltd, DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd, and Shriram Industrial Enterprises Water Reservoir Created. DCM Shriram. Kota Ltd. As per the scheme, DCM Ltd’s shareholders were allotted shares in owned with S.P. Lohia (of Indone- modified) crops, and crop care chem- DCM Shriram Industries and Shriram sia-based PT Indo Rama), was sold in icals like insecticides, herbicides and Industrial Enterprises in the ratio of 2007 to DLF, India’s largest property fungicides. The second is the Chlor- one share in each of the four com- developer, for `1,675 crore, DSCL get- Vinyl Business that produces caus- panies for every four shares held by ting half the proceeds. Swatantra mill tic soda, calcium carbide, chlorine, them in DCM Ltd as on 21 September was sold in 2014 for `17.12 crore. vinyl resins, vinyl compounds, 1990. At the time of this court-mon- Between 1990 and 2000, DSCL and cement. itored division, the turnover of the added to its portfolio Shriram Alkali The company has added value spent force that DCM Ltd had become & Chemicals, in Bharuch, for pro- businesses to these domains, such by then was `774 crore, with `50 ducing chlor-alkali, Shriram Envi- as Hyderabad-based Shriram Bioseed crore of PBDIT (profit before deprecia- ronment & Allied Services, in Genetics India Ltd, with overseas tion, interest and taxes). Gurgaon, Ghaghagra Sugar, in Uttar offices in Vietnam, Indonesia, the Lala Shri Ram’s great grand- Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district, Philippines and Thailand. Another sons, Ajay, Vikram and Ajit Shriram, followed by three more sugar units is Fenesta Building Systems, the are now taking his rich legacy for- in the adjacent Hardoi district, and country’s best selling UPVC (unplas- ward through the part of the busi- DSCL Energy Services Co Ltd, New ticised polyvinyl chloride) windows ness that was parcelled out to them, Delhi, for optimising energy usage and doors brand that offers com- namely, DCM Shriram Consolidated of businesses, industry and institu- plete solutions from design and fab- Ltd (DSCL), which they renamed DCM tions, and for providing engineering rication to on-site installation. It has Shriram Ltd (DSL) in 2014. Ajay, at 62 and project management services for fabrication units at Bhiwadi, in Raj- the oldest of the fraternal troika, is biomass and conventional fuel-based asthan, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hydera- now chairman & senior managing power plants. bad and Chennai. director, while Vikram is 58 and vice- Following a series of divestments, chairman & MD, and Ajit Shriram, and mergers and acquisitions over the Divestments and mergers 49, & joint MD. years, DSCL , and then DSL , flourished DCM Shriram’s manufacturing facil- The businesses they acquired were as an integrated business conglomer- ities of fertiliser, chlor-vinyl and Shriram Fertilisers & Chemicals, in ate, with an extensive and growing cement in Kota are served by a 133 Kota, Rajasthan, which produced presence across the entire agri value MW coal-based captive power plant, urea, plastics, chlor-alkali and dedi- chain and chlor-vinyl industry. The with another of 55 MW operating cated power, Shriram Cement Works, brothers were amongst the first to in Bharuch. Urea had its upas and also in Kota, Swatantra Bharat Mills, set up a chain of rural shops in India downs. Kota has a urea capacity of in Tonk, Rajasthan, and DCM Silk and DSL’s present portfolio com- 379,000 TPA (tonnes per annum), Mills, in New Delhi. At the time of prises primarily two types of busi- with a 700 TPD (tonnes per day) the division, some observers felt that nesses, one being Agri-Rural, served ammonia plant alongside, ammonia this branch of the family was left by a rural retail chain and spanning a feedstock for urea manufacture. with businesses that were struggling. sugar, basic nutrients like urea and Chlor-alkali capacities total 700 TPD With textiles on the decline, the silk other fertilisers, speciality nutrients, in both Kota and Bharuch. The four mill, with its 38-acre property 5 km hybrid, transgenic and open-polli- sugar factories, which source cane from Connaught Place and equally nated (OP) seeds, and GM (genetically from about 150,000 farmers, have u 59 u JUNE 20-JULY 3, 2016 Corporate Reports BUSINESS INDIA u THE MAGAZINE OF THE CORPORATE WORLD a combined installed capacity of sleepless nights,” says Ajay Shriram. coming on board to mentor them – 33,000 TCD (tonnes crushed daily), “It is easy to secure loans, but the he is very close to the three broth- the bagasse yielded firing a captive interest meter never stops ticking, ers and still on the DDSL board – and plant of 94.5 MW capacity. and the borrower has to deliver some other industry veterans too In late 2002, the company results, meet commitments, and joining as directors, the brothers divested its remnant sharehold- endeavour to realise the full scope of managed to steady their business. ing in all its Shriram group peers. any proposal he takes to the board.” They convinced Mantosh Sondhi, The final offload was from the Arun an early ‘technocrat’ secretary (of Bharat Ram-owned industrial yarn New benchmarks steel, coal and mines) to the Govern- and fabrics major, SRF, or Shri Ram Having grown in the shadows of leg- ment and founder of the heavy vehi- Fibres Ltd, where it sold off its resid- ends of his family, he acknowledges cles factory at Avadi and of Bokaro ual 1.5 per cent stake to SRF’s invest- that his company has made mistakes, Steel, to become the chairman. “He ment company. DSCL originally held “which is part of any business learn- helped us lay down the processes and 4 per cent, its biggest shareholding ing”, but maintains that unless one systems that we are still following,” in a Shriram group company. Today learns and grows out of such errors, Ajay Shriram notes. Other board in DCM Shriram, the promoters and success will be elusive. “We desire to members included D.N. Davar, then their groups have a combined stake be financially sound, not performing chairman, Industrial Finance Corpo- of 63.88 per cent, public sharehold- for others, but for our own selves and ration of India, and S.S. Baijal, former ing being 34 per cent, and shares for our board of directors,” he men- chairman, ICI group of companies.