Sula Vineyards gets SEBI approval for public offer

Mumbai: Sula Vineyards Ltd has received the Securities and Exchange Board of India's approval for its initial public offering.

Founder of Sula Vineyards, Rajeev Samant, said the company will never chase growth at the expense of profits.

"We have a balanced focus - growth is important but growth with profits, that's the way we like it," said Samant, managing director and chief executive officer.

Sula Vineyards Ltd has filed a draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India for an offer for sale of up to 25.5 mln shares by its promoters and investors. The face value of each share is 2 rupees.

Promoter Rajeev Samant will offload up to 1.17 mn shares while investors such as Confintra SA, Saama Capita III Ltd, Haystack Investments Ltd, and other individual shareholders will sell the balance shares. Samant currently holds 28% stake in the company.

Started in 1996, Sula Vineyards sells wine under brands such as Sula, RASA, Dindori, The Source, Satori, Madera and Dia.

The company currently produces 56 different labels of wine across 13 distinct brands at its four owned and two leased production facilities located in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

As of Mar 31, the company's distribution platform included over 47 distributors, 10 corporations, 23 licensed resellers, seven company depots, and four defence units. The company serves to over 23,000 points of sale, which includes 13,500 retail touchpoints and over 9,000 hotels, restaurants, and caterers.

In 2021-22 (Apr-Mar), the company's revenue from operations rose 8.60% to 4.54 bln rupees from 4.18 bln rupees in 2020-21. Its net profit rose multi-fold to 521.4 mln rupees in 2021-22 from 29.9 mln rupees in the preceding financial year.

Kotak Mahindra Capital Co Ltd, CLSA India Pvt Ltd, and IIFL Securities Ltd are the book running lead managers to the issue.

With inputs from Agencies