The Hindu Business Line : Manikchand Group to diversify

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Pune Feb. 20 The Rs 800-crore Manikchand Group is diversifying into thermal power, cement and steel over the next couple of years, and is also giving a fillip to its bottled water business. Divulging that the total investment in the power and cement sectors will be between Rs 2,500 crore and 3,000 crore, Mr Rasiklal Dhariwal, Chairman of the group, said that the process of land acquisition at Chandrapur, Maharashtra, for the purpose had already been initiated.

"The sale deed for 275 acres was recently executed, and we will be acquiring another 500 acres from MIDC," he said. The power plant will have a capacity of 500 MW while the medium-sized cement plant, which will have installed capacity of 250 tonnes, will also take care of the fly ash generated by the power plant, he added.

The power plant, for which 75 per cent funds will be generated through the debt route, and the remaining through private investment, will be a joint venture between Manikchand and its partner in the tea business, with the former holding the majority stake.

At present the Manikchand group's interests include pan masala, bottled water, construction, wind energy, electrical switches and packaged tea, with the first two verticals generating the major revenue.

In fact, Oxyrich, the company's bottled water brand that has been in the marketplace since September 2002, and purportedly "the only oxygenated bottled drinking water in the country", has just been awarded a process patent for the oxygenation process. It was also given the ISO 22000:2005 certification for its Pune plant.

Manikchand also launched Taral, a `non-oxygenated brand of bottled water' in the marketplace, a couple of weeks ago.

In order to expand the bottled water business, the company proposes to add to the existing number of bottling plants in Pune, Bangalore, Haridwar, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolhapur and put up plants at Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Lucknow. While those at Pune and Hyderabad are company owned, the others are franchises.

As a result of this expansion, the present capacity of 2.45 billion litres will be enhanced to 3.65 billion litres. Given that in India the bottled water market is growing at a clip of 30 per cent, Mr Dhariwal expects the revenue from bottled water alone to touch Rs 500 crore over the next couple of years.

Having chalked out an ambitious growth plan titled `vision 2010', Mr Dhariwal indicated that the target group turnover was Rs 1,500 crore.

More Stories on : Diversification | Cement | Power

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