Heritage Foods up 5% post stake buy by Premji fund

Business Standard reported that Premji Invest, the USD 1.2-billion private and public equity fund of Wipro chairman Azim Premji, has bought a stake in Hyderabad-based Heritage Foods. "The latter is a publicly held company, owned by Chandrababu Naidu, former chief minister of the state, with revenue of around Rs 1,400 crore in 2011-12," according to the report.

"The management of Heritage Foods is understood to be in the advanced stages of spinning off the company's retail arm, which runs 75 neighbourhood convenience stores under the 'Fresh' brand, focused on South India. Heritage Foods gets 90 per cent of its revenue from the dairy business; the rest comes from agriculture and bakery segments," the report said.

In a clarification on the above news item, the company said they were open for strategic partnership in retail business for accelerating its growth but not looking for stake sale.

"The company is not looking for any strategic investor at the group company level (HFIL) and the promoters are not looking to sell their stake. The buzz in the market regarding open offer by a strategic player with a total transaction value of USD 100 million, is not true," the company said.

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