Solara Active Pharma Sciences – Pure Play API

Lets take a step back and evaluate the entire Solara Aurora transaction. It comes as a surprise to me that a man who is held in high regard in investing circles exhibits such ordinary levels of Corporate Governance

Image 1 shows the shareholding of Aurore Life Sciences as on 31/3/22. To note is majorly owned by Hydra Active & Rajender Rao (92% in total).

Now, let us see who owns Hydra Active, the shareholding of which is attached in Image 2. It is owned by surprise, surprise – Equally by Arun Kumar + PAC AND a Hyderabad based family office. Note the name of Spiracca Ventures here, it is going to be of good use going ahead.

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Firstly, I dont think there were any categorical discloures made by Arun Kumar regarding his significant vested interest in the transferor co. (Aurore Life)

Secondly, lets now look at the financials of Aurore b/w 2020-22.

Seems evident to me that Aurore was banking to ride on one time gains from its COVID led business (Favipiravir orders) which would have vanished in due course. Here is a credit rating snip on the same

Now, lets take a glance at Spiracca. Spiracca ventures is the investment arm of Deepak Calian Vaidya, an erstwhile director in the Strides group of companies. He has been associated with Arun Kumar since 1998, and in 2021, post the merger announcement of Solara-Aurore, he tendered in his resignation as Director of the co in August 2021, and subsequently as director of Strides, on Nov 2022.

Since Nov 2022, let us have a look at what he has been upto. In these past 14 odd months, he has bought a total of 10.5% of Solara’s equity from guess whom! the promoter himself (txns have taken place at an avg price of 350)

Now,this could be due to the following
A) He is just simply still acting as a PAC for Arun Kumar and hence, this change of 10.5% equity should be considered a non event
B) There are other plans he has which might be strategic in nature. To just give our boarders a quick background of him, he is most renowned for his 12 year stint as head of Schroder Asia funds.

I am inclined towards point 2, as very clearly, Arun Kumar has an extensive ecosystem of his outside Solara in Strides (whom he rejoined as executive director in March 2022) and the eventual listing of Stellis. The man anyway is not involved in an executive role at Solara.

Would love to hear ya’ all and your feedback and thoughts.