Ramachandra Galla led Amara Raja to bring business under one entity

Promoters of Amara Raja Group, a major player in automobile batteries and power equipment headed by Ramachandra Galla, is consolidating the group holdings across the various companies under a newly formed holding entity, RN Galla Family Pvt Ltd.

A corporate structure for the holding entity, which so far was a partnership firm, is now being created by demerger of Amara Raja Electronics, to which group’s shareholding of listed entity Amara Raja Batteries has been transferred.

Amara Raja Electronics Pvt Ltd, a promoter-held company that manufactures products like digital inverters, battery charger and converters is being demerged to carve out two resulting companies, RN Galla Family Pvt Ltd, the group holding company, and Amara Raja Power Systems.

RN Galla Family Pvt Ltd has recently taken over the promoters’ stake of 24.24%, or 4.14 crore shares of Rs 1 each, in the group’s sole listed entity, Amara Raja Batteries, mostly from RN Galla Family & Co, a partnership firm, the listed entity’s disclosure says.

Together with promoter group-owned Mangal Industries, the Galla family owns 26.6% stake in Amara Raja while Johnson Controls of US holds 26%.

The Hyderabad bench of National Company Law Tribunal on August 2 ordered a meeting of the stakeholders in September for approving the demerger process of Amara Raja Electronics. The demerger is being done to “achieve stronger business focus on individual independent businesses as the risk, return, and growth strategies related to these businesses are significantly different,” the promoters told the court.

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Ramachandra Galla promoted Amara Raja Batteries in 1985 after returning from the US following stints in companies like US Steel Corp and later in Sargent & Lundy where he was engaged in designing nuclear and coal fired power plant.

He started off with manufacturing valve-regulated lead acid industrial batteries at Karakambadi in Andhra Pradesh targeting telecom, power and oil-and-gas sectors.

His son, Jayadev Galla, who is currently the vice-chairman and MD, took over from Ramachandra in 2003 and spearheaded Amara Raja’s foray into car batteries, turning into a worthy competitor to Exide.

Source: DNA Money