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| Serial entrepreneur |
| Kalpesh Damor / Aug 04, 2010, 20:22 IST |
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Starting out in trading, the Sandesara group is now a diversified multi-billion dollar conglomerate.
Starting from tea plantations, processing and trading, the Sandesara Group has come a long way to become a diversified multi-billion dollar business conglomerate. The man who has played a pivotal role in its growth over the last 27 years is Chetan Sandesara, the promoter of the group and joint managing director of the flagship group company — Sterling Biotech Limited.
After having graduated from Mumbai University with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, he and his elder brother Nitin Sandesara, a first-generation entrepreneur and chairman & managing director of the group, established the Sandesara Group.
In the late 1990s, the group forayed into the healthcare segment by setting up a green field gelatin manufacturing facility in Vadodara, the capacity of which has been enhanced by 10 times in the past 10 years. Sterling Biotech Ltd is the largest manufacturer of pharmaceutical and nutraceutical gelatin in Asia with a global and pan-India presence.
The younger Sandesara, 48, identified gelatin as a core focus business for the group early on and took care to develop an understanding of all the aspects of the gelatin business, including manufacturing and marketing. Today the group is focused on energy and infrastructure — future sectors of opportunity — in a big way.
Sandesara is responsible for devising group strategy and for business development. Besides healthcare, he also handles the Special Economic Zone (SEZs), ports, oil exploration and production, engineering, infrastructure and mining.
His efforts put have the Sandesara group among a select group of companies that has been granted operatorship in oil exploration in OPEC countries.
Under his leadership, the group set up a 3,300-acre greenfield multiproduct SEZ at Baruch, acquired the Masar plant of Gujarat Torrent in 2006, established health malls in Gujarat and Sterling Port Limited at Dahej.
The multi-product SEZ is fully operational and being marketed aggressively in the domestic and international markets, while the port caters to large panamax vessels which will have the capacity to handle all types of cargo, including POL, coal, fertiliser, chemicals and food.
The key companies promoted by Chetan Sandesara include Sterling Biotech Limited, Sterling International Enterprises Limited, Sterling SEZ & Infrastructure Limited, Sterling Port Limited, Sterling Oil Resources Limited, PMT Machines Limited and Sterling Healthcare Private Limited.
Over the last 27 years, the Sandesara group has transformed itself into a leading business conglomerate with a focus on high-growth industries such as healthcare/ pharmaceuticals, precision engineering components, crude oil exploration and production, leasing of rigs and oil trading across the globe.
The group, with a market valuation of about $6.5 billion, recently forayed into the infrastructure sector.
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