THE BIG SHIFT

THE TIME WAS early 2015. This consumer business functioned without a national sales head or a team driving innovation. There was no research and development to speak of and the business just chugged along without any great sense of direction. Sounds impossible? That’s how things were at Crompton Greaves’ consumer business.

To put things in perspective, the business was housed in Crompton Greaves. As a brand, it is over 80 years old with high levels of equity in categories such as fans, lighting and pumps. Owned by the charismatic Gautam Thapar, the problem stemmed from other group businesses (most notably paper) struggling on the back of high debt from expensive buyouts. There was little option but to put the profit-making Crompton Greaves on the block.

Concluding a buyout isn’t easy and this deal took time before a combination of two private equity (PE) funds—Advent and Temasek—acquired a 34.37 per cent share in the consumer electricals business in April 2015; the rest of the holding was to be listed in the market. This part, for which the outgo was ₹2,000 crore, was