Eveready Industries India Ltd (EIIL) has elevated Suvamoy Saha as the joint managing director of the company in an attempt to put the management in the hands of professionals and accommodate the views expressed by its largest shareholder, the Burman family of Dabur.
Saha is at present a non-executive director on the board which he rejoined in May 2020. He had left Eveready a year before after a 36-year stint in the company. Saha was a wholetime director, a position he held from March 2005 till he left in July 2019.
In a statement to the stock exchanges, EIIL said Saha would “enhance leadership in the company” in the post pandemic world as it looks for “new growth avenues for long term sustainability”.
The induction follows public statements made by the Burmans, who hold a 19.84 per cent stake in Eveready, asking the company to be run by professionals. In an interview to The Telegraph on June 23, 2021, Mohit Burman, vice-chairman of Dabur, had said: “We only want the company be run professionally and this would benefit all shareholders large and small.”
Amritanshu Khaitan, who is a promoter of the company, is now the managing director of Eveready, which never had a joint MD post in the past. The Khaitan family holds a 4.77 per cent stake in EIIL.
“This is a step towards increasing professional bandwidth of the company which is now on a strong footing and looking forward to a rapid growth,” Khaitan said on Tuesday while commenting on the induction of Saha.
The market leader of dry cell batteries also added heft to the fledgling lighting and appliance business by bringing in Mohit Sharma, an ex-Philips professional, as the vice-president of the division. Khaitan said the business should scale up to Rs 500-600 crore in two-three years.
“Overall, EIIL should reach a turnover of Rs 2,000 crore by 2025,” he said. It had reported Rs 1,249 crore operating income last fiscal.
EIL posted a 7 per cent rise in sales to Rs 282.14 crore and a 32 per cent rise in profit to Rs 31.19 crore, over the same period of the last year, as it continued to post stellar results. The company attributed the performance to robust pent up demand in June as the economy started to open up after restrictions imposed during the second wave in May.
