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_: Did you know that detergent maker Nirma is in the cement business? You surely will after this deal. In one shot, 71-year-old Karsanbhai Patel, founder and chairman of Nirma, will make the soap-to-soda ash enterprise the sixth largest cement manufacturer in India, if the transaction goes through.
The Rs 7,000-crore-plus Ahmedabad company on Monday agreed to buy French cement major Lafarge's local business for an enterprise value of Rs 9,400 crore ($1.4 billion), pipping bigger names like Piramal and JSW. Nirma will finance the acquisition, among the most profitable assets in the country, through a mix of equity and debt. The transaction will ramp up Nirma's fledgling cement business to 13milliontonne capacity from two million tonnes in Rajasthan.
Patel, who started his entrepreneurial journey in the late 1960s as a manufacturer of detergent, and cycling around towns and villages to sell it, is known for creating low-priced...