That used to be till Monday, when the CBI arrested the pinnacle of what used to be as soon as amongst India’s biggest conglomerates with pursuits in shopper durables, leisure, energy and effort. The cause for Dhoot’s (71) arrest used to be a criticism by way of the investigating government that the industrialist invested cash in Chanda Kochhar’s husband Deepak Kochhar’s trade to get out-of-turn loans.
In contemporary years, barring insolvency lawsuits, Dhoot controlled to stick under the radar. Not many would understand that Videocon used to be one of the crucial biggest colour image tube producers on this planet and the biggest shopper durables corporate within the nation, giving Samsung and LG a run for his or her cash.
Videocon Group used to be based by way of Nandlal Madhavlal Dhoot in 1984 in Aurangabad. The senior Dhoot in the beginning ran a sugar mill, and the circle of relatives additionally had a Bajaj Auto dealership in Aurangabad. Nandlal used to be into sugarcane and cotton cultivation. The circle of relatives then established Adhigam Trading to promote paper tubes, which later forayed into shopper electronics.
While the senior Dhoot enlisted all his sons — Venugopal, Rajkumar and pradip kumar — within the circle of relatives trade, it used to be Venugopal who used to be answerable for scaling up Videocon’s operations following a technical tie-up with Toshiba.
Younger brother Rajkumar performed statesman, getting elected to the Rajya Sabha for 2 phrases on a Shiv Sena price ticket and taking rate as president of business frame Assocham. But Venugopal used to be the primary motive force of the gang, coming into into production partnerships and obtaining international avid gamers.
As financial reforms resulted in a client growth, Dhoot scaled up operations thru a sequence of acquisitions, together with that of the Philips colour tv plant in 1999. In 2005, Videocon took over the colour tv tube production trade of worldwide large Thomson and, inside weeks, received Electrolux Kelvinator. The staff additionally signed a deal to obtain Korea’s debt-burdened Daewoo Electronics, taking the combat to the house marketplace of the Koreans.
The inflection level for the gang got here when it began diversifying out of doors its core house of shopper durables. When the federal government started promoting oil exploration blocks, Videocon used to be one of the crucial few teams with the stability sheet energy to bid for massive tasks. The staff invested in oil & fuel fields in Brazil, Indonesia, Mozambique amongst different portions of the arena.
When the federal government began issuing telecom licenses beneath the first-come-first-served coverage in 2008, Videocon used to be one of the crucial a hit candidates. It even drew hostile observations from the CAG for “jumping the queue”. Trouble began for the gang when the debate erupted over 2G licenses and the Supreme Court canceled the allocations. For the gang, this used to be a large hit because it had invested a number of thousand crores within the trade. At the similar time, the oil & fuel trade in Brazil were given caught after a metamorphosis of presidency there.
Besides production functions, Dhoot additionally got here beneath the limelight for his affiliation with Bollywood, hiring celebrities as emblem ambassadors and putting in place tv broadcaster Videocon D2H. He had additionally sought to obtain an IPL group.
The incapacity to carrier debt resulted in the corporate being downgraded and, after all, being declared a non-performing asset (NPA). With admitted claims of Rs 71,500 crore, Videocon used to be a part of the firms that the RBI referred to banks to begin insolvency lawsuits.