Single holding co for Ramaiah group cos

M S Ramaiah group, the Bangalore-based group with varied business interests has announced the consolidation of its corporate group of companies as Valdel Group.

This has seen coming together of John Brown Technologies (to be known as Valdel Engineers & Constructors), AmSoft Information Services and Sun Mart (Valdel Retail).

Announcing the consolidation strategy, M J Shantharam, the managing director of Valdel Group, said that the new entity would also be making a foray into the retail and the BPO space as well.

The retail super centre to be located in Bangalore is positioned as an ‘all-in-one’ centre, while the BPO venture will be a contact and transaction-processing centre.

Besides a net capital of Rs 5 crore (John Brown and Sun Mart), Shantharam said, an additional investment of Rs 35 crore would be made for the new venture. This includes investment for the call centre as well.

The company would raise this through part debt and part equity mode. However, the MS Ramaiah Group's educational and healthcare institutions will continue to operate as in the past.

“The formation of Valdel Group allows us to synergistically cross leverage each company's strengths and exponentially increase the value delivered to the stakeholders of the group.

By being a single group we can steer growth through international partnerships, joint ventures and by channelling new investments to achieve the targeted revenue goals," Shantharam said.

Last year, the group registered Rs 25 crore revenues and is 365-strong.

The group has projected revenues of Rs 170 crore by 2005 and will be nearly 1000-strong. A majority of these revenues will come from Valdel retail operations for which it is tying up with Malaysian-based Suwiah Corporation.

This super centre will include ATMs, chemists, bakery, photoshop, florist and beauty centre among others. The investment in this centre would be around Rs 25 crore.

The company would investment about Rs 10 crore on its BPO business which is yet to be named.

The first phase will include the establishment of a 250-seat contact centre and would focus on telecom, financial services and retail verticals.