Sahara India Pariwar is an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Lucknow, India with business interests in multiple sectors including finance, infrastructure & housing, media & entertainment, health care, education, hospitality and information technology. The group has been a major promoter of sports in India and was the title sponsor of the Indian national cricket team, Indian national hockey team and many other sports.
Video Sahara India Pariwar
Businesses
Sahara India Pariwar was founded by Subrata Roy. In 2004, Sahara group was termed by the Time magazine as 'the second largest employer in India' after the Indian Railways. The group operates more than 5,000 establishments spread across pan India with the employee strength around 14 Lakhs under the Sahara India umbrella.
Real estate
Sahara India Real Estate Company and the Sahara Housing Investment Corporation, subsidiaries of the conglomerate, buy and develop land for residential housing projects across India. The company has projects in Kanpur, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Kochi, Coimbatore, Gurgaon and Pune. Sahara has a collaboration with Turner Construction, an American building company, in some of its projects.
Sports
Sahara owns several professional sports teams in India in a variety of sports. In badminton, it owns the Awadhe Warriors of Lucknow, one of the eight teams in the Indian Badminton League'. In cricket, it owned the Pune Warriors India, a franchise team that played in the Indian Premier League (IPL),.
In October 2011, Sahara purchased 42.5% of the Force India Formula One team.
The company launched the Sahara Warriors Polo Team in 2012. From 2005 to 2014 Calcutta Football League is also sponsored by Sahara. In July 2012, Sahara India Praiser picked up the Lucknow franchise of the Hockey India League, the Uttar Pradesh Wizards. It is also the sponsor of the Bangladesh Cricket Team since 2012.
Media and entertainment
The group owns the national Hindi news channel Samay and 36 city specific regional news channels Sahara Samay. It also owns Sahara One, a general entertainment channel; Filmy, a Hindi movie channel; and Firangi, an entertainment channel. Sahara Samay received the "Broadcast Engineering Excellence Award" in 2008 for its network newsroom technology.
The group owns publishes and sells one magazine in English, seven editions of the Hindi daily newspaper Rashtriya Sahara, nine editions of Urdu Daily Newspaper Roznama Rashtriya Sahara and one International Urdu Weekly, Aalmi Sahara.
Sahara had produced, marketed, and distributed Hindi and other regional language films. Well known films produced by the company include Bewafaa, Page 3, Sarkar, No Entry, and Wanted. In September 2010, the company was in talks to acquire MGM Studios, but the deal collapsed. Sahara is willing to try again to take over MGM.
Hotels
Sahara owns a controlling stakes in New York City's Plaza Hotel and Dream Downtown Hotel, New York. Sahara entered into an agreement to sell the Plaza Hotel to Shahal M. Khan and Kamran Hakim for $600 million in May 2018.
In India, the group owns the "Sahara Star" hotel near Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
Finance
Sahara has interests in insurance and asset management. Sahara India Life Insurance Company Ltd. (SILICL) is a life insurance company in the private sector Sahara Asset Management Company Pvt. Ltd. manages 16 equity and debt mutual funds. Sahara Banking & Financial Services Fund has been adjudged the Best Performing Banking Sector Fund over a three-year performance by the international agency "Lippers" in 2012.
Other financial activities associated with the company have come under significant legal scrutiny, including a savings program with the stated intention of selling savings products to the poor, which government officials claim may be exploiting its customers.
Retail
On 13 August 2012, Sahara India announced the opening of their retail FMCG business named 'Q shop' (Quality shop) with an initial investment of Rs. 30 billion. Sahara also announced the hire of 600,000 sales personnel and 3000 customer care executives. At its launch, Subrata Roy said that Sahara had been planning for this venture for the last two years and was opening 'Q shops' in major cities across the country to provide adulteration-free consumer merchandise including processed food and beverages to buyers. The group said it would set up 305 warehouses in 285 cities in a phased manner.
Sahara India Pariwar's Sahara Q Shop entered into the Guinness World Records when it opened a record 315 outlets in 10 states of India, just at one time on 1 April 2013.
Power
Health care
The group owns a hospital in Lucknow. This hospital became operational in February 2009 and is currently operating with approximately 350 beds, including 120 bed Critical Care Infrastructure which is expandable to 554 beds.
Other businesses
Under the name "Sahara Next", the company offers information technology consulting services in banking, finance, media and entertainment, chemicals and CRM.
Subrata Roy has been planning to foray into online education in India, which is targeted at small towns and villages. He has put in a team in place which consists of members from top universities and colleges across India, and even abroad. The route map of the program has been prepared, and 14,000 hours of lectures has been churned out for this.
Former
The group owned an airline, Air Sahara, which it sold to Jet Airways in 2007.
Under the name "Sahara Global", it offers integrated travel and tourism services for domestic as well as international customers.
The group runs a school in Pune, the International School Aamby - Aamby Valley.
Maps Sahara India Pariwar
Criticism
Being a largely unlisted company Sahara India Parivar's activities have in recent times come under criticism. This includes allegations of unknown sources of capital, favorable treatment by political parties. In June 2014, the book Sahara: The Untold Story written by an eminent Indian journalist Tamal Bandyopadhyay highlighted some of these issues. that Subrata Roy has stole 35000 crore of various different banks
On 26 February 2014, the Supreme Court of India ordered the arrest of Subrata Roy, Chairman and founder of Sahara India Pariwar, for failing to appear in connection with the Rs.24,000-crore deposits his company has not refunded to its investors. He was eventually arrested on 28 February 2014 by Uttar Pradesh police on a Supreme Court's warrant, in a dispute with Market Regulator - SEBI. In a statement after the arrest, his lawyer said Mr. Roy's 92-year-old mother was in poor health and needed "her eldest son" by her side, and hence he failed to appear at the court. He was granted interim bail by Supreme Court of India for the same on 26 March 2014 on condition of depositing Rs 10,000 crore with the market regulator SEBI. Till May 2016, Roy was in Tihar jail, albeit with air conditioned facilities, awaiting trial, and is trying to sell some of his hotel properties.
Sahara claims that the company's fundamentals are intact and assets substantially exceed liabilities. and so far deposited more than 19,000 crores which will come back to Sahara India as it has already repaid 95% of its investors. The Securities And Exchange Board of India has repaid only Rs 64 crore to the investors since 2012 to the investors.
It is also been reported that Sahara has paid Rs 725.97 crore as TDS (tax deducted at source) to the Income Tax Departments on the interest which along with investment was repaid to 95 percent of the investors, between 2009-10 and 2012-13. The income tax authorities had found that the beneficiary investors were existent and accordingly confirmed the repayments made in those particular years. One of Sahara's arguments in the apex court revolves around the fact that if one government body has found investors, why can't the other.
Charitable work
The Sahara Welfare Foundation, the social development unit of Sahara India Pariwar, runs social welfare projects. The company assisted the families of Indian soldiers killed in the Kargil war with a commitment of 500 million (USD 10.65 million ) The company claims to have assisted families whose homes were damaged in the 2006 Gujarat earthquake. Other welfare activities include water purification systems and education resource systems in Indian villages.
In 2013, Sahara contributed to the relief efforts in flood hit Uttarakhand region wherein one lakh bottles of drinking water, juice bottles and food packets along with candles and match boxes were said to be provided by them. There were 25 medical health unit vans equipped with doctors and free medicines made available and It was said by the group that, they will contribute to the rehabilitation programme by constructing 10,000 pre-fabricated houses.
Guinness World records
- Sahara holds the record for the most people singing a national anthem simultaneously. 121,653 employees of the company sang India's national anthem on 6 May 2013 in Lucknow, India.
- Sahara India Pariwar's Sahara Q Shop entered into the Guinness World Records when it opened record 315 outlets in 10 states of India, all at once on 1 April 2013.
See also
- Sahara India Pariwar investor fraud case
References
External links
- Official website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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