Of all people, the Bachchans, one of Bollywood’s leading families, found themselves in the middle of the seeming tension between the Reserve Bank of India and the finance ministry as they went about making their first significant equity investment in an overseas company.
As part of their personal investment, the Bachchans have picked up a minority stake in Meridian Tech Pte of Singapore, which owns ziddu.com, a free cloud storage and e-distribution startup. The firm, which also offers a micro payment platform, was founded five years ago by Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli and recently started integrating bitcoins.
“Mr Amitabh Bachchan and his family have invested in Ziddu.com at a valuation of around $71 million. I’m very happy and excited that they have reposed confidence and trust in Ziddu.com,” Meenavalli said in response to text messages from ET.
Ziddu.com, said Meenavalli (quoting Google Analytics), was among the top five file-sharing sites across the world, generating 1.2 billion page views with visitors from more than 225 countries. The company logged revenues of $20 million in calendar year 2014.
The deal was executed on Monday. A person in the financial services industry told ET that the Bachchans had to use funds lying in their offshore accounts to close the deal because banks in India were unwilling to transfer the maximum permissible amount in the absence of a government notification — a problem that many well-heeled individuals have faced in the past few months while acquiring shares and properties abroad through RBI’s liberalised remittance scheme (LRS).
The LRS facility allows a resident Indian to invest up to a certain amount in foreign assets. In February this year, RBI in its monetary policy statement announced that the LRS limit was being raised from $125,000 to $250,000 per person per year. However, the finance ministry is yet to approve RBI’s decision. A month ago, an RBI spokesperson told ET that “the notification is pending with the government and banks can allow higher remittances only after the circular/notification is issued”. “In the meantime,” said the RBI official, “any urgent cases get referred to RBI which are considered on merits.” It is understood that shares of Meridian were bought for $252,000 using funds in two accounts — a single account of Bachchan Senior and a joint account he shares with son Abhishek.
Initially, the Bachchans were keen to put in as much as $500,000 in Meridian but had to settle for a lower investment because banks refused to handle remittance beyond $125,000 per person with the ministry yet to endorse the enhanced limit.
“All our bank accounts are declared. We chose to invest (in Meridian) as we see value and potential,” Rajesh Yadav, MD & CFO of AB Corporation Ltd (formerly Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd), said over telephone. Bachchan also holds 3.4 per cent equity in Stampede Capital, a BSE-listed company promoted by Meenavalli. Stampede is a financial technology house and a designated market maker in exchanges such as SGX, CME and NSE.
According to a Mumbai-based senior chartered accountant advising several high net worth individuals, a few banks were initially willing to remit the higher LRS amount but later told clients that they were in no position to transfer beyond $125,000. “Earlier, banks felt the ministry notification was a mere formality. But since the approval has not come even three months after RBI’s announcement, they don’t want to take a chance,” said the person.
In 2013, the eligibility limit was lowered to $75,000 when the rupee had come under pressure, but was later increased to $125,000 in June 2014. In February, RBI said, “On a review of the external sector outlook and as a further exercise in macro prudential management, it has been decided to enhance the limit under the LRS to $250,000 per person per year.”
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