India’s Cola King Adds Billions To His Wealth While Venturing Into South Africa And Thailand - Forbes

Ravi Jaipuria has seen his fortune jump by more than $3 billion in the last three months, spurred primarily by a 38% jump in shares of his flagship Varun Beverages. His net worth has nearly reached $15 billion on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires Ranking.

The 68-year-old chairman has been expanding his soft drinks-to-fast foods empire both at home and abroad, which has investors bidding up the shares of his two main listed companies—Varun Beverages and Devyani International—both of which announced acquisitions this week.

On Tuesday, Gurgaon-based Varun Beverages said that it would acquire South Africa’s BevCo for 13.2 billion rupees ($158 million). BevCo holds the rights to produce PepsiCo’s non-alcoholic beverages in the African nation. Shares of Varun Beverages jumped 7% on the news, reaching an all-time high of 1,253.40 rupees.

The other announcement came a day earlier from Devyani International, which is a franchisee of Pizza Hut, KFC and Costa Coffee in India. Devyani said on Monday that it would acquire a 50% stake in Restaurants Development Company (RDC) for 3.4 billion rupees. RDC operates a chain of 274 KFC restaurants in Thailand. News of that deal boosted Devyani’s stock by another 5.3% to 188.95 rupees.

Varun Beverages, which is already one of PepsiCo’s biggest bottlers outside the U.S., had previously set up a new South African subsidiary in Johannesburg in May with the hope of expanding in the market. By acquiring BevCo, Varun will gain a licensed manufacturer and distributor for PepsiCo with franchise rights for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini as well as distribution rights for Namibia and Botswana.

BevCo generated 15.9 million rupees in revenues for the year ended June 2023. It has five manufacturing plants, including three PepsiCo accredited plants in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.

Back home, Varun Beverages is setting up new plants in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Odisha with fungible lines for making carbonated soft drinks as well as non- carbonated beverages. The domestic expansion is meant to support its recent expansion into energy drinks, sports drinks, fruit juices and milk shakes.

Meanwhile, Devyani International is also pursuing an ambitious growth strategy. With more than 1,300 outlets across 242 cities in India and overseas, the company has a target of reaching 2,000 outlets by 2026.

Jaipuria’s business empire has its roots in a Coca-Cola bottling business started by his father and uncle in the 1960s. The youngest of three brothers, Jaipuria had gone abroad to study for his undergraduate degree before settling down in Montreal where he ran a small real estate and textiles business. But he returned to India in 1985, after his first wife’s untimely death in a plane crash.

After a family division in 1987, he got one bottling plant in the northern Indian city of Agra. Four years later, he decided to switch to PepsiCo, and he grew the business over the next three decades.