Serial entrepreneur and ace investor C Sivasankaran Group firm has thrown more weight in the agro sector. After having picked minority stakes in top domestic edible oil companies, a group firm has acquired over 8% in cereals company Usher Agro.
Siva Ventures' wholly owned company Aiwo Ltd, that is into health food restaurant and spa business, almost doubled its holding in Usher Agro over the last three weeks through open market purchases.
Earlier, the serial investor's group firms had hiked holding in Baring Private Equity and New Silk Route-backed edible oil firm KS Oils to close to 9%, making it the second largest institutional investor in the company behind New Silk Route that held little over 10% in the company as of end September. His group firms had earlier also picked stake in another large edible oil firm Ruchi Soya.
Usher Agro, that raised Rs 100 crore through a qualified institutional placement in late November, was rumoured two years ago to have initiated discussions with private equity firms such as Blackstone among others to sell a large stake.
Serial investor Siva had been active in picking stake in listed companies in India in either sectors in which his group already has a presence or as sectoral play (as in case of oil). Most recently, his group firm acquired a small stake in Sujana Towers, a company that is engaged in manufacturing telecom and power towers. This gels with Siva Group’s privately-held entity Siva Projects Engineering and Enterprises Limited, engaged in developing passive infrastructure for mobile communication towers and related services including operations & maintenance for tower operators.
These investments are coming as the broader valuations in the stock market has corrected sharply by around 10% after matching the highest ever level, last seen in January 2008.
