Promoters of Jain Irrigation Systems, a leader in micro-irrigation based in Maharashtra?s agricultural hotspot Jalgaon, plan to put at least 80% of their shareholding in a trust, Bhavarlal Jain, the group?s founder, has said.
Jain, 75, and his four sons ? Ashok, Anil, Ajit and Atul ? have agreed to place their shareholding in the trust in one year, a move that could stonewall any attempt by promoters to sell their holdings over potential rifts in the family.
?My sons have already said that we are going to put almost 80% of what we have by way of shares of the company into a trust. And that trust would be managed by them, but they will not be the beneficiaries of anything that happens to this (company),? said Jain. ?In short, it is a Tata model?.
Tata Sons, the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate, has 66% of its shares held under the Tata trusts.
Jain Irrigation Systems managing director Anil B Jain said that the trust should be in place in the next one year.
Like Jains, about three years back even Hotel Leelaventure?s patriarch CP Krishnan Nair had devised a unique path to preserve his family legacy.
He made his two sons Vivek Nair and Dinesh Nair sign a pact that either of them will not sell their holdings without offering it to the other brother.
Similarly, according to reports, Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao, the founder of the GMR Group, made his entire family vow before the family deity and senior group executives that they would work together in the group?s interest.
Jain Irrigation, that garnered R3,791.5 crore in revenues at the end of 2011-12 fiscal, has over the last four decades, built itself into an integrated company in the agricultural sector.
What started as a company providing farmers with solutions in the drip irrigation space, has forayed into agro processed products, which include dehydrated onions and vegetables, processed fruits, tissue culture, hybrid and grafted plants, greenhouses, poly and shade houses and bio-fertilisers.
The company is also into manufacture of drip and sprinkler irrigation systems and components, PVC, piping systems, plastic sheets and has an 8.5 MW of installed solar energy plant with plans to take it up to 10-11 MW by the end of the year. The biogas production stands at 1.6 MW.
The company started its agro processed products business in 1994-1995 with a plant capacity of 60 metric tonnes per day on onion dehydration side, which has now grown nearly nine times to 530 metric tonnes per day between two plants in Jalgaon and Baroda.
On the fruit side, the company handles 1,200 metric tonnes per day between three plants in Jalgaon and two in Chittoor in southern India. Jain, which is helping farmers increase productivity from their crops through tissue cultured saplings, sold close to 3 crore banana saplings last fiscal and expects to close the year at 5 crore. The company sold 28 lakh pomegranate saplings in 2011-2012 and expect to close the year with 55 lakhs. In plastic, the company?s production stood at 2.25 lakh metric tonnes in 2012 fiscal.
