Sandeep Agrawal: Packing In A Punch
With a specialisation in trading as global business, finance, human capital management, embracing change and looking after the shareholder interests, Sandeep Agrawal has provided an overall leadership and direction to the company. As the CMD of Kushal, Agrawal has a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the Gujarat University and a work experience of more than 25 years.
The Ahmedabad-based global commodity trading company Kushal (formerly Kushal Tradelink) started in 2000 as an India and paper-products focused trading company.
Under Agrawal’s leadership it has transformed into a well-diversified entity over the years, with business interests in several product lines in multiple locations across the globe. The company has emerged as a major player in the international commodities trading space.
Agrawal has developed two-way supply chain with all its global counterparts thereby connecting both the ends of the trade. Hence, Kushal Tradelink is one of the leading importers of waste paper, which is recycled and made into corrugated paper for the packaging industry, without any additional deforestation. “We believe in “brown-field” growth over “green-field” growth... we do not build factories from scratch, but we find it economical to buy out existing capacities in the marketplace at reasonable price...,” said Agrawal in a company statement.
“We are in process of amalgamation of three of our associate paper manufacturing companies. This will lead to backward integration resulting in greater control over market with better profitability,” he states.
Its overseas subsidiaries: Kushal Impex and Kashish Worldwide are in the business of general wholesale trade related to paper and papers industry along with bitumen, lignite, petcoke, agriculture products, metalised yard, generic drug among others.
The company announced a bonus issue of 1:1 in January 2017, which was completed in March 2017. Enthused by the interim results, our board also declared 105 per cent interim dividend as compared to 100 per cent in the fiscal 2015-16. Recently, the company has also incorporated one wholly owned subsidiary in Labuan, Malaysia with the main object of general trading and another domestic wholly owned LLP to venture into development of industrial parks, this according to Agrawal, will give impetus to the consolidated revenue and margins.
As per the report, in the fiscal 2016-17, the company has registered a top line growth of 48.41 per cent from Rs 2359.58 crore to Rs 1,589.90 crore driven by robust performance at the global level.
Expanding its global wings with increasing its product base and diversification has always shown a strategic acquisition at lucrative valuations and the same has helped the company in becoming leaders in paper manufacturing industry.
