While disappointing many by a postponement of her IPO, India’s pharma queen has been seen recently doing the rounds of financial institutions and global banks. Watchful investigations revealed that it was all done in an attempt to raise a rather large dollop of foreign currency debt. The purpose, setting up of Asia’s highest single location bio-processing complex in Hosur. While her company Biocon will be partly financing the complex, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is having to borrow the other half. The new plant which will house a one million-litre statin fermentation facility, will also contain production facilities for immuno suppressants as well as boast of an advanced R&D centre. For this, Rs 500 crore are required. While the tycoon hopes to get Rs 200 crore from banks, the rest she will produce from internal accurals. The main reason behind this ninety-acre complex is Shaw’s desire to make Biocon into a leading supplier of key products it already manufacturer but to do the whole chain once its patent expires three years from now. Tata’s Mr Bean Coffee has indeed come a long way. The newest to heat up the race is Ratan Tata who has come out with Mr Bean, his newest filter coffee. The new brand adds itself to the tycoon’s previous list of branded coffees which include Coorg, Coorg double roast, Tata Cafe and Tata Kaapi. All this is in pursuance of a strategy by which Asia’s largest integrated coffee company, with 20,000 acres of coffee estates under its fold, will now transform itself into an FMCG company concentrating on branded goods rather than bulk commodities. The tycoon has made sure everything is in his favour for the success of Mr Bean, from employing a 3D mascot to using new and innovative packaging. His main aim is to reach at least the number 2 mark in the branded filter coffee segment by the year 2005. Tata may have to stay be awake for many nights to ensure that his new coffee does indeed click. If it does, the southern half of the country will find itself awake and kicking for quite some time too as Tata has loads of new branded coffees brewing up his sleeve. Competition worries Now that there has been an improvement in the stock market as far as the IT sector is concerned, Narendra K. Patni has a smile on his face. For the tycoon who is the owner of the country’s sixth largest software services exporter, Patni Computer Systems has big plans this year. These he has skillfully divided into three parts, first a series of acquisitions, beginning with The Reference Inc of Boston. Second an ambitious IPO, and third an ambitious ADR offering. While the first part of the plan is already underway, the second more important part, the IPO has been largely enthused by the needs for greater transparency, and facilitation of an employee stock option plan. According to the grapevine the IPO will be a domestic issue between $60 million to $90 million. The tycoon and his family hold over 50 per cent stake, while his two foreign investors, US-based GE (General Electric Co) and General Atlantic Partners together contribute 52 per cent to its revenues. General Atlantic Partners has been so happy with Patni that it recently invested $100 million for expansion purposes. Patni’s ambitions however are to make his company into a professionally managed one. After seeing revenues of $188 million in the last year, hopes of a 2003 revenue growth, which will be higher than the industry average, are bound to arise. Patni who’s IPO is expected this year in September, has much to prove by it, and probably will not disappoint anyone unless TCS his biggest and oldest competitor, whose own IPO is in its nascent state, brings it out at the same time, and thus causes some really severe competition. That makes for one worried tycoon, at the moment. (Dilip Cherian runs public relations firm Perfect Relations and can be contacted at dilipcherian@hotmail.com)
