After a long-protracted battle and years of uncertainty over franchise rights for McDonald’s outlets in north and east India, Delhi-based business house, MM Agarwal Group, has emerged as a winner.
The group will now operate over 160 outlets for the American burger giant in the two markets that are considered the largest (north) and fastest-growing (east) in the country’s consumer goods space.
The group was founded by the late M M Agarwal and today its interests are spread across diverse sectors: from hotels to colas and offshore services for oil & gas industry.
Its foray into the food and beverages space, however, occurred in 1987, when the group set up Moon Beverages to bottle drinks for India’s cola king Ramesh Chauhan. The firm that M M Agarwal Group terms as its “flagship company” for beverages business, began bottling Thums Up, Limca, Maaza, Gold Spot, Rimzhim and Bisleri for Chauhan’s Parle Group.
Later, in 1994, following Coca-Cola’s re-entry into the local market Moon Beverages became the authorised bottler of the cola giant and is manufacturing and distributing drinks like CocaCola, Limca, Sprit, Maaza, Thumbs UP, Fanta, Minute Maid, Coke Zero & Kinley, since. It works as a co-packer with Coke through another company – Hindustan Aqua Ltd – which bottles Coca-Cola beverages.
In December, Moon acquired rights to further bottle and market Coke’s beverages from its three company-owned plants – in Varanasi (UP), Ghaziabad (UP) and Jammu (J&K) against Rs 500 crore. Together, the two group entities today operate at least six plants across north India.
MM Agarwal, who was a Rajya Sabha, expanded his business into offshore exploration services in 1998 by setting up HAL Offshore. The firm bagged operation & Management contract for ONGC owned MSV Samudra Suraksha for 2 years in that year and later several more from the PSU.
In 2006, the group forayed into the business of education by setting up Ishwar Chand Vidya Sagar Institute of Engineering and Technology in Mathura, providing various engineering and management courses.
Its interest in the hospitality sector is concentrated ITC Fortune Park — a four-star hotel in Ahmedabad under the ITC brand — that it operates.
Agarwal, who in his early days was rooted in India’s freedom struggle – especially during the Quit India Movement – was later selected as the executive chairman of the World Federation of United Nations, Geneva and chaired the Human Rights Commission at Ottawa (Canada), Russia, Mongolia and various other countries.
In later years, however, his group came under the lens of Income Tax officials. In 2015, a number of I-T search operations, including one at his residence in Kanpur took place.
Since his demise in August 2006 — months after his term at the Rajya Sabha ended, the group is headed by Agarwal’s son Sanjeev. The junior Agarwal (55), is probably associated with the brand Coca-Cola more closely than his father. After completing his masters in commerce from the Kanpur University, he went on to complete his MBA from Coca-Cola University at Atlanta. According to his profile at the group’s website, “he was instrumental in establishing the state-of the-art plant of carbonated soft drink under franchisee agreements with M/s Coca-Cola Inc, the USA at Kanpur, Sahibabad, Greater Noida and Rourkela”.