SAHARA INIDA GROUP

Sahara India Pariwar was founded by Subrata Roy.In 2004, Sahara group was termed by the Time
magazine as ‘the second largest employer in India' after the Indian Railways. The group operates
more than 5,000 establishments across India with the employee strength around 1.4 million
under the Sahara India umbrella.

Businesses

Sahara India Pariwar is an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Lucknow, India. The group
operates business sectors like finance, infrastructure & housing, media & entertainment, health
care, education, hospitality and information technology. The group has been a major promoter
of sports in India and was the title sponsor of the Indian national cricket team, Indian national
hockey team and Bangladesh national cricket team, Force India Formula One team among many
other sports.

Real estate

Sahara India Real Estate Company and the Sahara Housing Investment Corporation, subsidiaries
of the conglomerate, buy and develop land for residential housing projects across India. The
company has projects in Kanpur, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Kochi, Coimbatore,
Gurgaon and Pune. Sahara has a collaboration with Turner Construction, an American building
company, in some of its projects.

Sports

Sahara owns several professional sports teams in India in a variety of sports. In badminton, it
owns the Awadhe Warriors of Lucknow, one of the eight teams in the Indian Badminton
League.It owned the Pune Warriors India, a franchise cricket team that played in the Indian
Premier League (IPL).

The company launched the Sahara Warriors Polo Team in 2012. From 2005 to 2014 Calcutta
Football League is also sponsored by Sahara. In July 2012, Sahara India Pariwar picked up the
Lucknow franchise of the Hockey India League, the Uttar Pradesh Wizards. It was also the
sponsor of the Bangladesh Cricket Team from 2012 to 2015.
Media and entertainment

The Plaza Hotel in New York City

The group owns the national Hindi news channel Samay and 36 city specific regional news
channels Sahara Samay. It also owns Sahara One, a general entertainment channel; Filmy, a Hindi
movie channel; and Firangi, an entertainment channel. Sahara Samay received the "Broadcast
Engineering Excellence Award" in 2008 for its network newsroom technology.

The group owns publishes and sells one magazine in English, seven editions of the Hindi daily
newspaper Rashtriya Sahara, nine editions of Urdu Daily Newspaper Roznama Rashtriya Sahara
and one International Urdu Weekly, Aalmi Sahara.

Sahara had produced, marketed, and distributed Hindi and other regional language films. Well
known films produced by the company include Bewafaa, Page 3, Sarkar, No Entry, and Wanted.In
September 2010, the company was in talks to acquire MGM Studios, but the deal collapsed.
Sahara is willing to try again to take over MGM.

Hotels

Grosvenor House Hotel, 1920s postcard illustration

Sahara owned a controlling stake in New York City's Plaza Hotel and Dream Downtown Hotel,
New York. Sahara entered into an agreement to sell the Plaza Hotel to Shahal M. Khan and
Kamran Hakim for $600 million in May 2018.

In India, the group owns the "Sahara Star" hotel near Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International
Airport.

Finance

Sahara has interests in insurance and asset management. Sahara India Life Insurance Company
Ltd. (SILICL) is a life insurance company in the private sector Sahara Asset Management Company
Pvt. Ltd. manages 16 equity and debt mutual funds. Sahara Banking & Financial Services Fund
has been adjudged the Best Performing Banking Sector Fund over a three-year performance by
the international agency "Lippers" in 2012.

Retail

On 13 August 2012, Sahara India announced the opening of their retail FMCG business named 'Q
shop' (Quality shop) with an initial investment of Rs. 30 billion. Sahara also announced hiring
600,000 sales personnel and 3000 customer care executives. At its launch, Subrata Roy said that
Sahara had been planning for this venture for the last two years and was opening 'Q shops' in
major cities across the country to provide adulteration-free consumer merchandise including
processed food and beverages to buyers.The group said it would set up 305 warehouses in 285
cities in a phased manner.

Sahara India Pariwar's Sahara Q Shop entered into the Guinness World Records when it opened
315 outlets in 10 states of India, just at one time on 1 April 2013.

Health care

The group owns a hospital in Lucknow. This hospital became operational in February 2009 and is
currently operating with approximately 350 beds, including 120 bed Critical Care Infrastructure
which is expandable to 554 beds.

Other businesses

Under the name "Sahara Next", the company offers information technology consulting services
in banking, finance, media and entertainment, chemicals and CRM.

Subrata Roy has been planning to foray into online education in India, which is targeted at small
towns and villages. He has put in place a team which consists of members from top universities
and colleges across India and abroad.The route map of the program has been prepared, and
14,000 hours of lectures have been prepared for this. The group also announced on 1 July 2018,
that it is entering into new businesses which are at different levels of development, and will be
launched one after another in the year.
Former

The group owned an airline, Air Sahara, which it sold to Jet Airways in 2007.

In October 2011, Sahara purchased 42.5% of the Force India Formula One team. The team
finished as best 4th in the constructors championship in 2016 and 2017.

British driver Paul di Resta driving the Force India VJM05 carrying Sahara branding

The team went into administration in mid 2018 and was later sold and renamed Racing Point
Force India F1 Team.

The group runs a school in Pune, the International School Aamby – Aamby Valley.

Charitable work

The Sahara Welfare Foundation, the social development unit of Sahara India Pariwar, runs social
welfare projects.[44][45][46] The company assisted the families of Indian soldiers killed in the
Kargil war with a commitment of 500 million (US$10.65 million )[47][48] [49] The company
claims to have assisted families whose homes were damaged in the 2006 Gujarat earthquake.
Other welfare activities include water purification systems and education resource systems in
Indian villages.

In 2013, Sahara contributed to the relief efforts in flood hit Uttarakhand region wherein one lakh
bottles of drinking water, juice bottles and food packets along with candles and match boxes
were said to be provided by them. There were 25 medical health unit vans equipped with
doctors and free medicines made available and It was said by the group that, they will contribute
to the rehabilitation program by constructing 10,000 pre-fabricated houses.

guiness world record

Sahara holds the record for the most people singing a national anthem simultaneously. 121,653
employees of the company sang India's national anthem on 6 May 2013 in Lucknow, India.
Sahara India Pariwar's Sahara Q Shop entered into the Guinness World Records when it opened
record 315 outlets in 10 states of India, all at once on 1 April 2013.