Tata Group Makes An Offer For Buying Stakes In Bisleri International: Report

The size of the packaged water market in the country is estimated at Rs 20,000 crore, of which 60 per cent is unorganised. Bisleri owns 32 per cent of the organised market

Tata Group has made an offer to pick up stake in India’s largest packaged water firm, Bisleri International, quoting some executives, The Economic Times reported on Monday.

According to the report one of the executives told ET, “Tata Group has made the offer to Bisleri for a stake acquisition which it wants to scale up eventually”, while adding, “This would give the Tatas a massive foothold in packaged drinking water across the entry-level, mid-segment, and premium packaged water categories, and a ready go-to-market network across retail stores, chemist channels, institutional channels, including hotels, restaurants and airports, besides bulk-water delivery, since Bisleri mineral water leads across each of these channels.”

The ET report has also attributed the stake dilution to succession planning by Bisleri owner Ramesh Chauhan.

According to Bisleri’s official website, the company has more than 150 manufacturing units and a network of over 4,000 distributors with 5,000 trucks across India.

The size of the packaged water market in the country is estimated at Rs 20,000 crore, of which 60 per cent is unorganised. Bisleri owns 32 per cent of the organised market. It has its own app Bisleri@Doorstep to deliver products directly to consumers, including bulk 20-litre packs as well as smaller bottles starting from 250 ml to 1 litre.

Meanwhile, apart from Bisleri, Tata Group is also holding talks with Taiwanese supplier to Apple Inc, Wistron Corp, to set up an electronics manufacturing joint venture (JV) in India, seeking to assemble iPhones in the country, Bloomberg said on Friday.

According to the report, the talks with Wistron are aimed at making Tata a force in technology manufacturing as the Indian conglomerate wants to tap the Taiwanese firm’s expertise in product development, supply chain, and assembly, sources privy to the development. If successful, the pact could make Tata Group the first Indian firm to build iPhones, which are currently mainly assembled by Taiwanese manufacturing giants such as Wistron and Foxconn Technology Group in China and India.