Shilpa Shetty, Raj Kundra rename Hind Safety Glass after son Viaan

Mumbai's celebrity couple, Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra, has renamed the company they took over recently after their three-year old son Viaan.

Viaan, who celebrated his third birthday last month, is lending his name to Kolkata-based Hindusthan Safety Glass Industries, a defunct listed glass company with no operations that his parents took over in September.

Viaan Corp Ltd will be their newest business venture that might see the power couple - one a Bollywood celebrity and another a Britain-born entrepreneur - foraying into a host of trading as well as export import operations, so varied in nature that the company's name wouldn't be signifying any particular area of operations.

The board, which met on June 20, has okayed the decision, and subsequently informed the stock exchanges.

The Kundra family's newest business venture follows their recent foray into the retailing space using online and television broadcast platform, named Best Deal TV, where another Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar has been roped in as a partner.

Till recently, a 24/7 home-shopping channel, Best Deal has recently tied up with Amazon for its presence in e-commerce space.

The new name of the erstwhile safety glass company was decided upon and cleared by the Board this week and subsequently informed its handful of shareholders who are now eagerly waiting to cash in on the ongoing upswing in the share prices following the surprise takeover of a company where all hopes were lost.

The Kundra couple in September acquired 51.51% stake in the Kolkata-based company from a clutch of investors and promoter family of Jagdish Agarwal at a nominal price of Rs 1.88 crore.

Following this, the couple made an offer for 26% of the balance equity capital at a price of Rs 12 a share.

Curiously, none of the public shareholders – who are holding 7.94 lakh shares – tendered their shares in the open offer.

The decision of the shareholders has paid off as the share price of Hindusthan Safety Glass has zoomed 10 times since then, from a level of Rs 12 to Rs 122 as on Friday close.

Not many shares are traded though – in ones and twos – as everybody is holding on to their shares for further appreciations.

Since the takeover, Raj Kundra and Shilpa Shetty have been re-designated as non-independent non-executive director of the company, and family confidante Darshit Indravadan Shah has been appointed as chief executive officer.

Exactly what kind of operations Viaan Corp would undertake is still not clear as a range of business activities from "general merchant" activities in trading in commodities and undertaking import and export of varied items like merchandise, edible oils, coal, steel, chemicals, and also bullion and jewellery have been incorporated in the object clause.