Decks Being Cleared For Gulshans Son At T-Series

More than a month after Gulshan Kumar was gunned down on a Mumbai street, the Rs 350-crore group he created, T-Series, is demarcating management responsibilities and cutting down on non-core businesses.

Gulshan Kumars son, Bhushan Kumar, has been inducted into the board of directors of the flagship Super Cassettes. He has inherited around 57 per cent of the shareholding of Super Cassettes from his father.

Around 38 per cent is with Gulshan Kumars father, Chander Bhan. The remaining 5 per cent is split equally in lots of 0.4 per cent between Gulshans brothers, daughters, wife, sister and three friends.

While Bhushan is being groomed to take over the company at a future date, the management says it will take some time before he is able to assume full responsibility.

 

In the interim, Chander Bhan will assume the position of chairman and managing director. Gulshans brothers, Darshan Kumar, Gopal Krishna and Krishan Kumar have also assumed greater responsibilities than earlier.

They will be looking after various parts of the sprawling empire that Gulshan Kumar built.

As of now, the group has interests in pre-recorded audio/video cassettes and blanks, compact discs, CD players and colour and black and white television sets, detergents, mineral water and incense sticks.

The bulk of the profits of the group, however, come from the cassettes business. The family and management insist that there will be no split on issues of management and control.

The group has decided to trim itself and as part of the effort, it will pull out of the production of commercial movies.

Chander Bhan says commercial movie production is far too expensive. In the last few years, Gulshan Kumar had entered into film production, as an extension of his music and cassettes business. However, we will continue to focus on our buying of film music rights, says Bhan.

The group has decided, for the moment, to put the planned diversifications on hold. The immediate focus will be on profit-making Super Cassettes and then, on detergents and mineral water. The companys increase of its cassette manufacturing capacity from 4 lakh to 5 lakh per day was delayed because of Gulshan demise but is now expected to go on stream in the next few days.