Guardian pharmacy sells majority stake to Business family Taparias

Mumbai: The guardian pharmacy, India’s third largest pharmacy chain after the Apollo and the Medplus has sold its majority stake to the Business family, Taparias. The deal, which had been under consideration few months has come for a consideration of Rs 55 crore, sources told Economic Times.

Taparias have bought the shares held by Samara Capital and Japan’s Mitsui.

Samara Capital and Alay Lal a private equity professional are the equity holders in the Guardian pharmacy. After the deal, the guardian pharmacy will be run by a team of professional management. This Pharmacy chain was started in 2003 by Ashutosh Garg who will now have minority stake and will be one of the board of directors in the new company. His interest is expected to be Rs 300 crore in the company, a previous

TOI report suggests.

It is said that the Guardian will now focus on consolidating itself to NCR and gradually plan for expansion across the country. Guardian will also work on its online arm for pharmacy and health care services.

Of late, disputes between Samara and Ashutosh Garg were noticed over payment defaults by the Guardian pharmacy to another firms backed by Samara Capital. Samara wanted to step back and had filed a winding up case against the Guardian Lifecare, on the contrary Garg had blamed the private equity firm of illegally removing him from the active management.However, ET adds that both the parties later withdrew all court cases on each other and the matter was resolved.

Taparias, last year sold its main business, Famycare, the female contraceptive manufacturing companyto a drug maker Mylan for Rs 4600 crore.