By Atmadip Ray

Copyright indiatimes

AgenciesThe group’s main focus will revolve around healthcare, hotel and real estate, while PGFI will carry out the treasury operation for the group companies.

Peerless, once a small savings company, is trying to script a turnaround after years of stagnation and pressure on profitability. The Kolkata-based family-owned business conglomerate is expanding in healthcare and real estate, besides strengthening the treasury operation, while it plans to sell its financial product distribution subsidiary, a “low-scale” business in the new scheme of things.The group is in the process of investing about Rs 1,100 crore over three years in expanding its footprint in hospital business and real estate.It has also taken its hospital business outside West Bengal for the first time, through an acquisition of a 250-bed facility in Guwahati for Rs 150 crore. Last year, it bought out a smaller 120-bed hospital in Barasat near Kolkata. Besides, it is spending Rs 450 crore to set up a cancer wing — Sunil Kanti Roy Institute of Oncology Services — of its first hospital in the memory of its former managing director.“The investments will accelerate profit growth after the build-up phase is over,” said Jayanta Roy, son of SK Roy and now managing director of Peerless General Finance & Investment Company (PGFI), the holding entity of the group.Peerless saw an 11% drop in consolidated revenue to Rs 675 in 2024-25 from Rs 758 crore in the preceding financial year. The group’s profit fell 54% to Rs 127 crore from Rs 274 crore during this period. The profit was even below the Rs 139 crore that it recorded in 2020-21 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.Live EventsPGFI, which began financial services distribution after it was barred from mobilising public deposits in 2011, has identified Darsh Advisory Pvt Ltd for selling the 100% owned Peerless Financial Products Distribution for about Rs 23 crore.The group’s main focus will revolve around healthcare, hotel and real estate, while PGFI will carry out the treasury operation for the group companies.“We are making our treasury operations more contemporary. We were conservative even two years back, investing 20% in equities and 80% in debt. Today we have a more balanced investment strategy, with nearly 47:53 breakup,” said chairman Partha Sarathi Bhattacharya.PGFI’s treasury returns, however, got impacted due to volatile markets, with its standalone revenue falling 31% to Rs 238 crore in 2024-25, as against Rs 345 crore in the preceding fiscal. Profit was lower too, at Rs 138 crore, against Rs 224 crore.Meanwhile, PGFI is in the process of monetising its existing land bank. It recently launched its first independent real estate development project in Rajarhat, targeting the affluent.To be sure, the group’s transformation journey started sometime in 2021-22, when it built a new team and invited Bhattacharya, the former Coal India chairman and Haldia Petrochem director, to guide the team.The group, which saw its profit before tax falling at a compound annual rate of 11% between 2013-14 and 2018-19, did better between 2021-22 and 2024-25, with a 12% annual growth, said Supriyo Sinha, director PGFI and a key strategist.“The current investments will have significant funding costs and depreciation, thereby impacting near-term profits, but will enable future growth,” he said. Incorporated in 1932 as The Peerless Insurance Co Ltd by Radhashyam Roy, the company started mobilising small savings in 1956. The Reserve Bank of India classified it as a residuary non-banking company in 1987 when the central bank established the framework for regulating non-bank mobilisers of public deposits like Peerless.“Efforts in scaling up size and impact have been initiated across the company’s activities as well as group entities in a focused drive towards business transformation in many spheres,” Bhattacharyya said in the company’s latest annual report. Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now!
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