IT capital makes way for the rosy capital

IT capital makes way for the rosy capital
30 Aug, 2007, 1600 hrs IST,Tapash Talukdar, TNN

AHMEDABAD: India Inc’s shopping list isn’t restricted to the world’s top car and mobike companies, Scotch and tea labels, hotels and steel factories—a bunch of roses too could make up for the necessary pleasantries.

Bangalore-based Karuturi Networks has acquired Dutch floriculture major Sher Agencies in a e50-million ($69 million) deal to become the world’s biggest rose producer.

After the takeover, the company’s top line will bloom from Rs 100 crore to Rs 400 crore. Karuturi’s rose-producing capacity will also grow from about 150 million stems to around 650 million.

Incidentally, Sher Agencies FC, a top Kenyan football club based in Naivasha, which was being promoted by the Dutch flower major, has also come as part of the deal.

Prior to the deal, Karuturi was among the four largest rose producers in the world, the others being Sher, James Finlay of Hong Kong (which originally owned what is now called Tata Tea) and World Flower. Karuturi now plans to invest in building capacity in Bangalore and Ethiopia, where it is already present, as well as in Kenya, where it will get Sher’s floriculture business. “We will produce 1 billion stems of roses and become a Rs 1,000-crore company by 2010. We are well on course,” Karuturi MD KS Ramakrishna told ET, confirming the deal. He said all formalities of the deal will be completed in the next 2-3 weeks.

Karuturi plans to raise $70 million through a mix of qualified institutional placements, foreign currency convertible bonds and external commercial borrowings, Mr Ramakrishna said.