RPSG Group

The history of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group can be traced back to 1820, when Ramdutt Goenka came to Calcutta (now Kolkata) from a small town in Rajasthan, India. He arrived in this part of the east coast of India to do business with the British East India Company. By the 1900s, the Goenkas had established themselves in diverse business sectors such as banking, textiles, jute and tea. For their outstanding contribution to business and the community, the Queen of England conferred knighthood on Sir Hariram Goenka and Sir Badridas Goenka. In 1933, Sir Badridas Goenka became the first Indian to be appointed Chairman of the Imperial Bank of India (now the State Bank of India). Sir Badridas Goenka was then elected President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), in 1945. Keshav Prasad Goenka (son of Sir Badridas Goenka) carried the spirit of entrepreneurship forward.

In 1950, the Goenkas acquired two British trading houses - Duncan Brothers and Octavius Steel. After successful acquisitions in the areas of tea, automobiles, tyres, jute, cotton textiles and electric cables, Keshav Prasad Goenka handed over the reins of his business empire to his three sons.

One of the sons, Rama Prasad Goenka (better known as RP Goenka), established RPG Enterprises in 1979 with Phillips Carbon Black Ltd (PCBL), Asian Cables, Agarpara Jute and Murphy India as its constituents. The 1980s witnessed further acquisitions by the Group; the first being that of CEAT Tyres India in 1981. The Group then went on to acquire KEC (1982); Searle India, now RPG Life Sciences (1983); Dunlop (1984); Gramophone Company of India Ltd, now Saregama India (1986); and finally in 1989, CESC, Harrisons Malayalam, Spencer & Co, and ICIM.

Sanjiv Goenka took over as Chairman of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group in the summer of 2011. CESC’s existing operations in the Group’s Power sector comprise generation and distribution of electricity to its 2.9 million customers across its licensed areas in Kolkata and Howrah, West Bengal. A 2 x 300 MW coal fired thermal power project at Chandrapur in Maharashtra is being executed by Dhariwal Infrastructure Limited (DIL), a 100% subsidiary of CESC Infrastructure Limited. Construction work of the project is now in its advanced stages. CESC has also started commercial production at its first Wind Power project in Dangri, Rajasthan. The 24 MW project was implemented during the later part of the financial year 2012-13 by Surya Vidyut Limited, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of CESC. The power from the project is being sold to State Discoms under two separate power purchase agreements. In 2012, Spen Liq Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of CESC, purchased a majority stake in Firstsource Solutions Limited (FSL), India’s fifth-largest BPO Company. FSL has strength of around 31,000 people, spread across 47 delivery centres in India, the US, the UK, Ireland, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. It serves over 100 global clients including 21 Fortune 500 companies and nine FTSE 100 companies. Spencer’s Retail Limited now has 132 stores (including 26 hypermarkets) across India under the Spencer’s label. Rama Prasad Goenka, the 'Chairman Emeritus' of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, as well as the Chairman of CESC Ltd, died in April 2013. Sanjiv Goenka took over as the Chairman of CESC Ltd after his father’s death.

• CESC Limited
• RPG Group