2023 for Conglomerates: Next gen in decision making roles and thrust on new businesses, listings

JSW Group’s scion Parth Jindal also has a meaningful role in all the group’s businesses.

New verticals have been added by India’s top business houses this year. Birla’s foray into the paints business is a big bet by the group. Aditya Birla Group also entered into more B2C businesses like branded jewellery, Novel Jewels and an innovative B2B e-commerce platform for construction material, Birla Pivot.

For RIL, it’s a significant year with the fastest 5G rollout pan India. In online retail, the beauty platform Tira made a big launch in 2023, expected to give competition to the incumbents in this space. RIL launched its FMCG brand Independence and it shows the group’s focus on capturing the consumption market which is visible in different ventures across verticals.

Tata Group made some significant progress in expanding its manufacturing capabilities across verticals. Tata Electronics is said to be taking strides in setting up a semiconductor unit, which Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran had earlier announced. Tata Group formed a new company, Agratas, to set up a EV battery plant in the UK. Auto vertical, Tata Motors partnered with Cummins to manufacture low-to-zero emissions tech products.

Even JSW Group known for old economy sectors made a foray into the new age sector of Electric Vehicles by forming a JV with MG Motor India. New-age businesses and technological thrust are emphatically visible in the new bets taken by the large conglomerates.

The year also stands out due to the blockbuster listing of Tata Tech, an IPO from the house of Tatas after almost two decades of TCS listing. Even the JSW Infra listing came as an IPO offering from the group after 14 years of JSW Energy’s debut on the bourses. Reliance Industries listed Jio Financial Services, a new entity from the conglomerate after over a decade.

As new businesses attain scale, this theme has seen some instances in the last few years but it was more prominent this year. Aditya Birla Group listed Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund in October 2021, 14 years after the listing of its telecom arm Idea Cellular in 2007. Ajay Piramal demerged the Pharma business last year after 15 years of Piramal Glass. A few large listings are already in the pipeline from RIL and Tata Group for the next couple of years.

These business houses are busy strengthening new business verticals, a lot of them are new-age businesses or sectors of the future, surely this space is growing fast and the scale-up of new verticals will make sure that the next wave of listings is much sooner than the last long gap and driving it will be the energetic next-gen driving the decision making for the groups in the coming year.