Nirma’s Patel Jr looks to cement his legacy
The legendary Karsanbhai became a household name, courtesy a detergent that became ‘sabki pasand’. Can his son Hiren recreate that magic?
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Editor's note: Nine years after delisting from stock exchanges, the Nirma group is making a comeback to the capital markets. And leading the charge this time around is Hiren Patel, son of the legendary Karsanbhai Patel, who made history by briefly humbling the mighty Hindustan Unilever Ltd (then called Hindustan Lever Ltd) with a home-made detergent in the 1980s. The junior Patel heads the Ahmedabad-based group’s cement arm, Nuvoco Vistas Corp. Ltd, which has filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India to raise around Rs 5,000 crore through an initial public offer, sometime in June or July. Nuvoco Vistas is not a name that rolls off the tongue when you think of the Indian cement sector. Yet it has quietly pursued an aggressive mergers and acquisitions strategy in the past five years to emerge as the fifth largest cement player in the country. It is also the biggest player in the eastern market, which incidentally is the fastest growing in the country. In 2016, the group acquired the Indian assets of LafargeHolcim for $1.4 billion. In February 2020, …
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