The Adani Group on Friday gained full control of news broadcaster NDTV Limited after it acquired most of the stake of founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, at a premium of almost 17% over the rate it paid to minority shareholders of the firm.

The Adani Group now holds 64.71% of New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV), according to a regulatory filing.

In a later development, NDTV said the Roys, along with four other directors, have resigned following the change of ownership.

Besides, the former promoters of the news broadcaster have asked to be re-classified from ‘promoter’ to ‘public’ category shareholders, which was approved by the Board of Directors, subject to the approval of the shareholders of the company, stock exchanges, and other necessary approvals.

The other directors who have resigned are Darius Taraporvala and independent directors Kaushik Dutta, Indrani Roy, and John Martin O’Loan.

Prannoy and

Reliance Consumer Products Ltd (RPCL), the fast-moving consumer goods arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, will acquire a controlling stake in Lotus Chocolate.

RCPL has entered into an agreement with the promoters of Lotus Chocolate, which manufactures chocolates, cocoa products, and cocoa derivatives.

As part of the share purchase agreement, RCPL proposes to acquire 77% of the paid-up share capital of Lotus Chocolate through a “secondary purchase” from promoters Prakash Peraje Pai and Ananth Peraje Pai, followed by an open offer.

“RCPL will acquire 65.48 lakh equity shares of LOTUS representing 51% of the paid-up equity share capital of LOTUS from the current promoter and promoter group… at a price per share of Rs 113.00 aggregating to Rs 74 crore,” said a joint statement.

“RCPL and certain promoter group entities of LOTUS to subscribe to 5.07 crore non-cumulative redeemable preference shares of face value of Rs 10 each,” the statement added.

Agritech startup Ecozen secured $10 million from Nuveen Global Fund. This is the second tranche of its planned Rs 200 crore Series C round.

The news was first reported by Entracker.

The board of Ecozen has passed a special resolution to issue 1,06,657 Series C2 CCPS at an issue price of Rs 7725.67 each to raise Rs 82.4 crore or $10 million, according to regulatory filings.

Founded by IIT Kharagpur alumni, Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal, and Vivek Pandey, EcoZen develops technology-enabled products to strengthen the farm-to-fork value chain of perishables.

In June this year, Ecozen raised Rs 54 crore of additional funding as part of the first tranche of a planned Series C round. The new funding round was led by Dare Ventures, the venture capital arm of Coromandel International, with participation from existing investors—Caspian and Hivos-Triodos Fonds (managed by Triodos Investment Management)—through equity.

Ecozen develops climate-smart

Daniel Strode is Global Director of Culture and Strategy at Banco Santander, based in Madrid. He is the author of The Culture Advantage: Empowering Your People to Drive Innovation (see my book review here).

See also YourStory’s Book Review section with takeaways from over 350 titles on creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation, social enterprise, and digital transformation.

Daniel is the custodian of a common organisational culture—the Santander Way. He is an Adjunct Professor at the IE School of Human Science and Technology, and a frequent speaker at industry conferences.

He joins us in this interview on how leaders create cultural direction, the creative mindset, innovation cultures across the world, and tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Edited excerpts below:

YourStory [YS]: In the time since your book was published, what are some notable new examples of innovation you have come across?

Daniel Strode [DS]: Indeed, the world is changing so fast. The

Srikrishnan Ganesan started his SaaS journey with Konotor, later acquired by FreshWorks. From zero to one, one to 10, and 10 to a 100 scale, the SaaS veteran has seen it all in the SaaS world.

Sri is now building Rocketlane—a purpose-built customer onboarding platform that shortens the user’s time to value and eliminates hit-or-miss experiences with customers. 

Inspiration behind Rocketlane

Sri and his team launched FreshChats at FreshWorks—kind of a relaunch of their product, Konotor, and it became the fastest product there to hit various revenue milestones. It was this momentum and not a ‘product idea to solve a problem’ that pushed Srikrishnan and his team to go out and build a new business and chase that momentum.

The problem was something that they experienced firsthand—customer experience. Where every company claims to be customer-centric, the start of the partnership after signing a contract is when many stop being one.