Kumarmangalam Birla, who heads the sprawling Aditya Birla Group, will not immediately join the board of Kesoram Industries Limited, the patriarch of the Birla clan, B.K. Birla, said.
Mr. Birla, the Kesoram Industries Chairman, when questioned about not inducting Mr. Kumarmangalam into the company’s board so far, said, “Kumarmangalam is an extremely busy person and hardly finds any time to come to Kolkata as he is heading several companies. As of now, he has no plans to join Kesoram board.”
Birla’s daughter, Manjushree Khaitan, has already joined the company board as a director. She was tipped to become the vice-chairman.
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When asked whether Mr. Kumarmangalam would be able to accept Kesoram’s responsibility when the time came, Ms. Manjushree said, “Yes, he will.”
Earlier, Mr. Birla said the day-to-day affairs of the company would be looked after by Ms. Manjushree under Mr. Kumarmangalam’s guidance.
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Ms. Manjushree announced the company’s plan to restructure organisationally its tyres division Birla Tyres, director of the company said on Tuesday.
“We are changing the current structure of Birla Tyres and a chief executive will be shortly appointed,” Ms. Khaitan told reporters after the company’s AGM here.
She said the division would go for a change in the product mix and would manufacture more car radials and two-wheeler tyres.
Regarding Kesoram, she said consultancy firm McKinsey had been appointed to chalk out a strategy for the company to improve profitability.
There were no plans to de-merge the tyre and cement businesses, she said.
For securing coal assets for its cement plants, the company had been allotted a block in Nagpur along with two other partners, D.P. Jindal group and Dhariwal group.
Wholetime director of the company K.C. Jain said that Kesoram was holding majority shareholding in the joint venture.
He said that the block was having a reserves of 20 million tonnes and would sustain the cement business of the company.