As far as I know, all Religare shareholders support us: Mohit Burman
Dabur India, is unfazed by the Religare Enterprises Ltd board's resistance to his family's open offer, after initially welcoming it. He says that acquiring Religare will add a crucial piece to the Burman family's growing bouquet of financial products and that the company needs a promoter to re-enter the lending business. In a lengthy interview conducted over two days, Burman stopped short of commending Religare chairperson Rashmi Saluja for the company's recovery while giving "full marks" to the management team for the turnaround.
Burman also said his group contributed to the recovery. "Hopefully, all shareholders will support our offer," Burman said. He also said he was puzzled by a first information report (FIR) filed by the Mumbai Police, linking 32 people including him and Gaurav Burman, director of Dabur Ltd, to the Mahadev betting app scandal.
Edited excerpts from the interview: The family is focused on B2C businesses. Our flagship businesses are in the FMCG sector. We focus a lot on food and beverages.
We have been in the financial services business but in joint ventures, but historically, we have been running FMCG and pharma businesses ourselves. In the insurance space, we partnered with ABN Amro, Aviva General Insurance Company and three other banks. So, therefore, our interest in Religare came about because it has a very strong franchise in the health insurance business.
While we are already in life and general insurance businesses, we felt that this is a potential business we could add value to and therefore, we have made the open offer. Our journey with Religare started in 2018 when the company was on its deathbed. We put money through a preferential offer – ₹176 crore in August of 2018.
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