Sahara India Pariwar

Businesses

Sahara India Pariwar was founded by Subrata Roy. The group operates 4,799 establishments under the Sahara India umbrella.

Real estate

Sahara India Real Estate Company and the Sahara Housing Investment Corporation, subsidiaries of the conglomerate, buy and develop land for residential housing projects across India. The company has projects in Kanpur, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Kochi, Coimbatore,Gurgaon and Pune. Sahara has a collaboration with Turner Construction, an American building company, in some of its projects.

Sports

Sahara owns several professional sports teams in India in a variety of sports. In badminton, it owns the Awadhe Warriors of Lucknow, one of six teams in the Indian Badminton League'.

In cricket, it owned the Pune Warriors India, a franchise team that played in the Indian Premier League (IPL),.

In October 2011, Sahara purchased 42.5% of the Force India Formula One team.

The company launched a polo team, the Sahara Warriors Polo Team in 2012. From 2005 Calcutta Football League is also sponsored by Sahara.

In July 2012, Sahara India Praiser picked up the Lucknow franchise of the Hockey India League, the Uttar Pradesh Wizards. It is also the sponsor of the Bangladesh Cricket Team since 2012.

Media and entertainment

The group owns a national Hindi News Channel Samay and 36 city specific regional news channels Sahara Samay. It also owns Sahara One- A General entertainment channel, Filmy- A Hindi movie channel, and Firangi- An entertainment channel. Sahara Samay received the "Broadcast Engineering Excellence Award" in 2008 for its network newsroom technology.

The group owns publishes and sells one magazine in English, 7 editions of Hindi Daily Newspaper Rashtriya Sahara, nine editions of Urdu Daily Newspaper Roznama Rashtriya Sahara and one International Urdu Weekly, Aalmi Sahara.

Sahara produces, markets, and distributes Hindi and other regional language films. Well known films produced by the company include Bewafaa, Page 3, Sarkar, No Entry, Wanted. In September 2010, the company was in talks to acquire MGM Studios, but the deal collapsed. Sahara is willing to try again to take over MGM.

Hotels

Sahara owns a controlling stakes in New York City's Plaza Hotel and London's Grosvenor House Hotel.

In India, the group owns the "Sahara Star" hotel near Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.

Finance

Sahara has interests in insurance and asset management. Sahara India Life Insurance Company Ltd. (SILICL) is a life insurance company in the private sector Sahara Asset Management Company Pvt. Ltd. manages 16 equity and debt mutual funds. Sahara Banking & Financial Services Fund has been adjudged the Best Performing Banking Sector Fund over a three-year performance by the international agency "Lippers" in 2012.

Other financial activities associated with the company have come under significant legal scrutiny, including a savings program with the stated intention of selling savings products to the poor, which government officials claim may be exploiting its customers.

Retail

On 13 August 2012, Sahara India announced the opening of their retail FMCG business named 'Q shop' (Quality shop) with an initial investment of Rs. 30 billion. Sahara also announced the hire of 600,000 sales personnel and 3000 customer care executives. At its launch, Subrata Roy said that Sahara had been planning for this venture for the last two years and was opening 'Q shops' in major cities across the country to provide adulteration-free consumer merchandise including processed food and beverages to buyers. The group said it would set up 305 warehouses in 285 cities in a phased manner.

Sahara India Pariwar’s Sahara Q Shop entered into the Guinness World Records when it opened a record 315 outlets in 10 states of India, just at one time on 1 April 2013

Health care

The group owns a hospital in Lucknow. The hospital was opened in 2009. This hospital became operational in February 2009 and is currently operating with approximately 350 beds, including 120 bed Critical Care Infrastructure and expandable to 554 beds.

Other Businesses

Under the name "Sahara Next", the company offers Information Technology consulting services in banking, finance, media and entertainment, chemicals and CRM.

Under the name of "Sahara Credit Cooperative Society Limited" the company collects funds from individuals. It deliberately defines condition that the deposit cannot be withdrawn or surrendered before maturity period.The maturity amount is just the deposited amount plus nearly simple interest of the whole amount [As per the Terms and Condition of 'Sahara .M. Benefit' for a deposit of Rs 200 per month, if an individual deposits Rs 12000 for a full tenure of 60 months, he/she will receive Rs 14783 on maturity (with a total benefit of Rs 2783 as a reward after 5 years)]

There are several complaints on 'National Consumer Complaint Forum' that the collection office is not able to pay the individual the maturity amount even after the end of maturity period. In some cases the agents force the individual to migrate to another scheme instead of refunding the money. Some other cases the local office only changes /extends the date of issuing the cheque adding frustration to the poor individuals.

Former

The group owned an airline, Air Sahara, which it sold to Jet Airways in 2007.

Under the name "Sahara Global", it offers integrated travel and tourism services for domestic as well as international customers.

The group runs a school in Pune, the International School Aamby – Aamby Valley.

Criticism

Being a largely unlisted company, with often secretive practices, Sahara India Parivar's activities have in recent times come under criticism. This includes allegations of unknown sources of capital, crony capitalism, favorable treatment by political parties and a close nexus with the latter. In June 2014, a book "Sahara: The Untold Story" written by an eminent Indian journalist Tamal Bandyopadhyay highlighted some of these issues.

On 26 February 2014, the Supreme Court of India ordered the arrest of Subrata Roy, Chairman & Founder of Sahara India Pariwar, for failing to appear in connection with the Rs.24,000-crore deposits his company has not refunded to its investors. He was eventually arrested on 28 February 2014 by Uttar Pradesh police on a Supreme Court's warrant, in a dispute with Market Regulator - SEBI. In a statement after the arrest, his lawyer said Mr. Roy's 92-year-old mother was in poor health and needed "her eldest son" by her side, and hence he failed to appear at the court. He was granted interim bail by Supreme Court of India for the same on 26 March 2014 on condition of depositing Rs 10,000 crore with the market regulator SEBI. As of January 2015, Roy was still in Tihar jail, albeit with air conditioned facilities, awaiting trial, and is trying to sell some of his hotel properties.

In July 2015, SEBI cancelled Sahara’s mutual fund licence - it ordered the cancellation of Sahara Mutual Fund's certificate of registration on expiry of a six-month period.

Charitable work

The Sahara Welfare Foundation, the social development unit of Sahara India Pariwar, runs social welfare projects. The company assisted the families of Indian soldiers killed in the Kargil war with a commitment of 500 million (USD 10.65 million ) The company claims to have assisted families whose homes were damaged in the 2006 Gujarat earthquake. Other welfare activities include water purification systems and education resource systems in Indian villages.

In 2013, Sahara contributed to the relief efforts in flood hit Uttarakhand region wherein one lakh bottles of drinking water, juice bottles and food packets along with candles and match boxes were said to be provided by them. There were 25 medical health unit vans equipped with doctors and free medicines made available and It was said by the group that, they will contribute to the rehabilitation programme by constructing 10,000 pre-fabricated houses.

Guinness World records