Samir Mehta: Torrent Group Owner's Biography

Key facts
Born	18 September 1963 [1]
Family roots	Memadpur village, Banaskantha district, north Gujarat (his father’s birthplace); the group is based in Ahmedabad [59][60]
Education	B.Com, Gujarat University; business management at B.K. School of Business Management, Ahmedabad [34][12]
Family	Younger son of Torrent founder U.N. Mehta and Shardaben Mehta; elder brother Sudhir Mehta (Chairman Emeritus); sons Aman Mehta (Managing Director, Torrent Pharma) and Shaan Mehta [10][18][34]
Group	Torrent Group: Executive Chairman of Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Chairman of Torrent Power; the family also owns Torrent Gas, held through Torrent Investments Ltd [2][1][34]
Hurun India Rich List 2026	No. 10, listed as “Samir Mehta & family”, Rs 1.89 lakh crore (roughly US$20 billion) [46][47]
Known for	Building Torrent Pharma through a string of acquisitions (Elder, Unichem, Curatio, JB Chemicals) while staying almost invisible in public [58][13]

In the early 1990s, the young managing director of an Ahmedabad drug company found his team walking from one government office to another in Moscow, looking for somebody, anybody, who would admit that the state owed his company money. The Soviet Union had just broken up. Its central buying system, which had made a small Gujarati drug maker comfortable, was gone. In Forbes India’s words, “70 percent of Torrent Pharma’s market vanished overnight”. [53]

“We had to go from department to department [in Moscow] to find someone who would acknowledge that there was money owed to us,” Samir Mehta recalled years later. [53] Most of the money came back. The market did not. So he and his elder brother Sudhir chose, in his phrase, “to rebuild the business brick-by-brick”. [53]

Three decades later the same man signed the largest deal in his company’s history, a takeover that valued J.B. Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals at Rs 25,689 crore. [13][71] And in September 2026 the M3M Hurun India Rich List placed “Samir Mehta & family” at No. 10 in the country, with Rs 1.89 lakh crore. [46]

This is the story of a media-shy younger son who took a company built on one clever idea and turned it into one of India’s largest drug makers, with a power utility, a gas network and an IPL team alongside. It is also the story of what went wrong on the way, and of the questions his group still has to answer.

Where it began

Samir Uttamlal Mehta was born on 18 September 1963, the younger of two sons of Uttambhai Nathalal Mehta and Shardaben Mehta. [1][10] To understand him you have to start with his father, because the Torrent story is, at its root, about a man who refused to stay beaten.

U.N. Mehta was born on 14 January 1924 in Memadpur, a village in Banaskantha district of north Gujarat. [59][60] The group’s own account, issued for his birth centenary, says he “was born in an extremely poor family and lost his mother when he was just two years old”. [59] After school he moved to Mumbai and took a chemistry degree at Wilson College. [60]

Money was short, so in 1944 he took a government job. From 1945 to 1958 he worked as a medical representative for Sandoz, the Swiss drug maker, carrying samples from one doctor’s clinic to the next. [60]

The job taught him something useful. A small Indian firm with little money could never out-shout the multinationals in front of every general physician. But it could own a corner the big firms had neglected. [53]

In 1959 he set up Trinity Laboratories in Ahmedabad with his savings: Rs 25,000 by the Gujarat government’s account, Rs 30,000 by Forbes India’s. [60][53][2]

It did not work. “He failed in his first attempt at setting up a business and had to return to his village for many years,” the group’s centenary statement says plainly. The same statement speaks openly of the personal setbacks that marked his life. [59] Samir was born in the middle of that difficult stretch.

Then the father came back. By 1968 he was marketing psychiatric medicines, an unusual bet for an Indian-owned firm at the time. [60] In 1970 came Trinicalm Plus, a combination drug for psychiatric illness, which became a blockbuster. [53][55] According to Business Today, a legal dispute over the Trinity name forced a change, and the business became Torrent. [55] Torrent Pharmaceuticals Limited was registered on 15 July 1972. [10]

The founder was 48 when, in the group’s words, he “succeeded in his second attempt at setting up a pharmaceutical business”. [59] Samir was not yet nine.

(The sources do not agree on every early date. The company and the Gujarat government say Trinity was founded in 1959; one Business Today account says 1969. [2][55])

The company calls the founder’s method “niche marketing”: pick a speciality, serve those doctors better than anyone, and ignore the mass market. [2] It is still the core of Torrent’s India business.

Sudhir, born in 1954, joined their father in the early 1970s. [21] Torrent built its first plant at Vatva, Ahmedabad, in 1980 and won its first export order, from the Soviet Union, in 1983. [20] By Business Today’s account, the Soviet business brought in Rs 8 crore of the company’s Rs 14 crore revenue in its first year. [55]

Samir studied commerce at Gujarat University and then business management at the B.K. School of Business Management in Ahmedabad. [34][12] He did not go looking for a job elsewhere. A 2026 group filing dates his association with Torrent to January 1985, when the family’s holding company was incorporated. [34] He joined the board of Torrent Pharmaceuticals on 20 August 1986, a month short of his 23rd birthday, and became its managing director in 1989. [10][12]

He opened Torrent Power’s 2024 shareholder meeting with his father’s motto: “It is pardonable to aim high and miss, but it is not pardonable to aim low.” [31]

The first break

The Soviet orders were Torrent’s first big break. They were also a trap, because one customer had become most of the business.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the centralised procurement system was disbanded. [53] Business Today estimates that about Rs 200 crore was stuck there and took more than two years to recover. [55] For a managing director not yet 30, it was a hard lesson in what happens when one buyer can sink you.

The rebuilding had three parts.

First, India. Torrent went back to the founder’s formula and widened it from psychiatry to the long-term illnesses of a richer country: heart disease, diabetes, disorders of the brain and nerves, and stomach ailments. These are medicines people take for years, prescribed by specialists who value a familiar brand. [11]

Second, partners. From 1992 Torrent manufactured insulin for Novo Nordisk, the Danish company. The relationship still runs: by 2017 Torrent’s dedicated unit was supplying about 70% of Novo Nordisk’s needs in India. [63] In 1996 the company opened its own research centre. [20]

Third, patience. “Decisions that we take for the business need to add long-term value and not just short-term profitability,” Samir told Forbes India. [53]

That patience was learned the hard way, because the 1990s were also when the group over-reached. It bought a leasing company, started a capital-heavy penicillin project and took over two city power utilities within a few years. [54] “The 90s was when we expanded at a fast pace. It was such a pace that we didn’t realise that maybe we had spread ourselves too thin,” Samir admitted in 2022. [54]

The fix was painful but quick. In 1999 the group sold its stake in the company that owned its new 655 MW power plant at Paguthan to Britain’s PowerGen. Torrent calls it India’s largest M&A transaction of the 20th century; Business Today reports the money went to repay debt and fund new projects. [33][29][57]

U.N. Mehta died on 31 March 1998. [59] Sudhir, as the elder son, became chairman. [17]

Building the empire

Two brothers, two engines

For the next two decades the brothers ran Torrent as a pair. Sudhir was chairman and the force behind power. Samir, managing director of the drug company since 1989, was the operator: the man who built systems and watched the money. [29] Torrent’s annual reports describe him as “A fine blend of business acumen and cautious entrepreneurial optimism”. [4]

The power business had started in 1989-90 with the takeover of an ailing cable maker, Mahendra Electricals, renamed Torrent Cables. [33][57] Then came the utilities. Torrent took management control of the Surat Electricity Company in 1996-97. [33] For the Ahmedabad Electricity Company it fought a takeover battle that began in 1995 and turned its way in July 1997, when the Gujarat government decided to sell it a stake. Along the way Torrent raised its offer from Rs 65 a share to Rs 132 after Bombay Dyeing countered with Rs 90. [62]

In 2006 the pieces were merged into Torrent Power Ltd, which listed that November. [1] It built the 1,147.5 MW SUGEN gas plant near Surat, commissioned in 2009. [33]

It also took on a new kind of job: running someone else’s broken electricity network as a franchisee. Bhiwandi, the powerloom town near Mumbai, was India’s first such franchise. When Torrent took over in January 2007, 58% of the power supplied there was lost, stolen or never paid for. The company puts that figure at about 9% now. [33][1][26] Agra followed in 2010. [23]

Abroad, slowly this time

The drug company went overseas again, but carefully. Torrent set up in Brazil in 2001 and began building a business there that would take years to pay back. [20] “It was a paradigm shift for us. Earlier we were looking at opportunities that could be monetised quickly with limited resources,” Samir said. [53]

In 2005 Torrent bought Heumann, a German generics business, from Pfizer. [20][2] “The idea of an Indian company acquiring a European company was unfamiliar [when Heumann was bought] and the German workforce didn’t know what to expect,” he said. Torrent made sure the new chief executive was German. [53]

The United States came late. Then, in 2015-16, a single product, generic aripiprazole, lifted US revenue from Rs 832 crore to Rs 2,671 crore in a year, before competition pulled prices down again. [56][10][9]

The acquisition machine

The Torrent that investors know today began on 13 December 2013. That day it agreed to buy 30 brands from Elder Pharmaceuticals, including the calcium supplement Shelcal, for Rs 2,004 crore. [11][58]

The market did not like it. Torrent’s shares fell about 4% and one brokerage said the price was on the higher side. [64] The deal was paid for with debt: the debt-to-net-worth ratio doubled from 0.47 to 0.97 and the annual interest bill rose from Rs 21 crore to Rs 161 crore. [11]

What happened next became the house method. Samir did not force Torrent’s rules on Elder’s sales staff. “We focussed on building a trust bridge [with Elder’s employees]. We explained the rationale behind each of our productivity-linked HR policies,” he said. [53] By 2017 Shelcal alone was a Rs 300 crore brand. [58]

In May 2014 Sudhir said he would step down as chairman of Torrent Pharma and become Chairman Emeritus. Samir took over as executive chairman from 30 July 2014. [17][65]

Then the pattern repeated:

• 2015: Zyg Pharma, a maker of skin creams with a US-approved plant near Indore. [11][10]
• 2016: Glochem’s bulk-drug plant in Visakhapatnam, for about Rs 130 crore. [9]
• 2017: Unichem’s India business, with brands such as Losar. The price was announced at Rs 3,600 crore; the accounts record Rs 3,515 crore paid in cash. [66][9]
• 2018: Bio-Pharm, a small US maker of liquid medicines. [19]
• 2022: Curatio Healthcare, a skin-care specialist, for Rs 2,000 crore. [67]

Each time the steps were the same: borrow, fold the new brands into Torrent’s field force, raise productivity, repay. Net debt stood at 2.37 times operating profit (EBITDA) in March 2019, after Unichem. By March 2025 it was down to 0.6 times. [7][2]

“We believe inorganic growth will continue to be an integral part of our overall growth strategy as we deleverage further,” Samir wrote to shareholders in 2022. [6]

JB Chemicals: the biggest bet

On 29 June 2025 Torrent announced the deal that changed its size. It agreed to buy the 46.39% of J.B. Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals held by the private equity firm KKR for Rs 11,917 crore, or Rs 1,600 a share. That valued JB at Rs 25,689 crore. An open offer to public shareholders and a merger would follow, with JB shareholders getting 51 Torrent shares for every 100 they held. [13][68]

Banks lined up a Rs 20,000 crore credit line. The chief financial officer said he should be able to repay the debt in two and a half years. [69] Not everyone was convinced: some analysts pointed to Torrent’s record with Elder and Unichem, while others flagged the risk of a deal so much bigger than anything it had tried before. [70][71]

The Competition Commission cleared the deal on 21 October 2025, subject to modifications the companies had offered. [72] Because almost nobody tendered in the open offer (just 1,317 shares came in), Torrent needed far less cash than the headlines suggested. [2] It raised Rs 10,990 crore through bonds and Rs 1,500 crore through commercial paper in January 2026 and took control of JB on 21 January. [2] Reuters had reported that the planned bond sale, of up to Rs 12,500 crore, would be the largest rated fund-raising of the financial year so far. [73] The company law tribunal in Ahmedabad sanctioned the merger on 6 July, and it took effect on 8 July 2026. [74][14]

JB brought well-known brands such as Cilacar, Rantac and Metrogyl, a contract manufacturing business and revenue of Rs 4,148 crore. [2]

The numbers show the distance travelled. In 2014-15, Samir’s first year as chairman, Torrent Pharma’s revenue was Rs 4,653 crore. [11] In 2025-26 it was Rs 13,980 crore, with net profit of Rs 2,138 crore. [15] The company says it now ranks fifth in the Indian drug market and first in heart medicines. [2]

“We are now the second largest pharma company by market capitalization,” Samir told shareholders in June 2026. [16] He did not name the company ahead of it; India’s largest drug maker is Sun Pharma, built by fellow Gujarati Dilip Shanghvi.

The price of that growth is debt. Net debt rose from 0.6 times EBITDA to 2.3 times in a year. [2] Aman Mehta, Samir’s son and now managing director, told analysts in July 2026 that the company would not want to go above 3 to 3.5 times for any opportunity, and would wait at least 12 to 18 months before another large deal. [14]

Power, gas and cricket

On 1 April 2018 Sudhir stepped back from Torrent Power as well, saying he wished “to spend more time on educational, social and religious activities”. Samir became chairman, with Sudhir’s son Jinal as managing director. [25][76] “Sudhirbhai has been the ‘sutradhar’ of Torrent Group for last 2 decades,” Samir told shareholders that August. [30]

Under the new line-up Torrent Power has made its largest moves:

• 2022: bought 51% of the electricity distributor of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu for Rs 555 crore (Rs 586 crore after adjustments). [1]
• September 2025: announced a 1,600 MW coal plant in Madhya Pradesh costing about Rs 22,000 crore, the group’s largest single investment in power. [77]
• June 2026: completed the purchase of Nabha Power, a 1,400 MW coal plant in Punjab, from L&T for Rs 3,632 crore, at an enterprise value of about Rs 6,889 crore. [27][78][23]

By 30 June 2026 Torrent Power had 6,564 MW of peak generating capacity and about 43 lakh customers. [26][27] It reported distribution losses of 2.33% in its licensed areas in 2025-26, which it calls the lowest in the country. [28] Revenue that year was Rs 28,966 crore and profit after tax Rs 2,469 crore. [28][23]

Torrent Gas, started in 2018, holds city-gas licences covering 34 districts in seven states and one union territory. It earned revenue of Rs 5,933 crore and a profit of Rs 281 crore in 2025-26. In September 2026 it filed papers for an initial public offering in which the family holding company would sell up to 20%. [34]

Then there is cricket. In 2021 Torrent bid Rs 4,653 crore for the new Ahmedabad IPL franchise and lost to CVC Capital’s Rs 5,625 crore; the group of Gautam Adani bid Rs 5,100 crore, according to Outlook Business. [79] In February 2025 Torrent agreed to buy 67% of that same team, the Gujarat Titans, from CVC. By mid-March 2025 it had all approvals, including the cricket board’s. The official statement gave no price. [44][80]

In February 2026 the group opened a large diagnostics laboratory in Navi Mumbai, led by Sudhir’s younger son Varun. [81][34][1]

How the wealth is held

Almost none of this sits in Samir Mehta’s own name. He personally holds 6,125 shares of Torrent Power. [32]

The family’s stakes are held through Torrent Investments Ltd, a core investment company registered with the RBI and incorporated in January 1985. [34] It owned 68.31% of Torrent Pharmaceuticals at March 2026. That works out to about 60.8% after new shares were issued to JB’s shareholders in July, without the family selling a share (our calculation from the share counts). [2][74] It also owns 51.09% of Torrent Power and all of Torrent Gas. [32][34]

Above the holding company sit four Mehta family trusts created in 2023, two for each brother’s branch. [34][82] Bloomberg reports that the two brothers’ families own half each. [52]

The family sold 2.94% of Torrent Pharma for Rs 3,086 crore in October 2024. [75]

A word on the Hurun number. In 2025 Hurun listed the brothers separately, Sudhir Mehta & family at No. 35 and Samir Mehta & family at No. 36, each with Rs 62,200 crore. [48][49] The 2026 list shows “Samir Mehta & family” at Rs 1.89 lakh crore, which Hurun describes as a 52% rise. [46] A 52% rise fits the two 2025 entries added together (Rs 1,24,400 crore), not one of them. That is our arithmetic, not Hurun’s statement, but it suggests the 2026 figure reflects the wider family’s holding. Forbes counts the two brothers as a single fortune: US$14.1 billion, No. 15, on its 2025 India list. [50]

A low profile

Business Standard once called him “usually reclusive”. [58] He gives few interviews, and most of his public words are in annual reports and AGM speeches. He has served as president of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, the lobby of large Indian drug makers, and sits on the board of governors of IIM Ahmedabad. [83][45] He draws no salary from Torrent Power, only a commission, which was Rs 17 crore in 2025-26. [23]

The setbacks and failures

America. In 2018-19 Torrent recalled 107 batches of valsartan and 132 batches of losartan, two blood-pressure drugs, after impurities were found in ingredients bought from outside suppliers. [8] The January-March 2019 quarter ended in a net loss of Rs 152 crore, after a Rs 217 crore write-down on Bio-Pharm and Rs 140 crore of recall costs. [84]

Then came a US FDA warning letter for the Indrad plant and an adverse classification for the Dahej plant (see the next section). New US approvals from both were put on hold: for about four years at Dahej and close to five at Indrad. [7][4][104] US revenue slid from Rs 1,589 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 1,078 crore in 2023-24. [7][4]

In May 2022 Samir shut the US liquids business he had bought only four years earlier, taking a Rs 485 crore charge and a quarterly loss of Rs 118 crore. [85] The company had, he wrote to shareholders, “taken a difficult decision of discontinuing our liquids business in the US”. [6]

A power plant with no gas. DGEN, a 1,200 MW gas-fired plant at Dahej, was commissioned in November 2014 and has run only now and then since, for want of affordable gas and buyers. Torrent Power has written down Rs 2,300 crore on it, Rs 1,000 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 1,300 crore in 2021-22. [1][24] As of June 2026 it still had no long-term buyer. [26] A planned coal plant at Pipavav was abandoned for lack of fuel supply. [23]

Reliance Capital: won the auction, lost the company. On 21 December 2022 Torrent Investments was the highest bidder for bankrupt Reliance Capital at Rs 8,640 crore, ahead of the Hinduja group’s Rs 8,110 crore. After the auction closed, Hinduja raised its offer, and the lenders decided to hold a second round. [86] Torrent went to court. The tribunal in Mumbai agreed with it in February 2023, calling a second auction a violation of the rules. [87] The appellate tribunal reversed that in March, and the Supreme Court declined to stop the second auction while keeping Torrent’s appeal alive. [88][89] Torrent stayed away from the second round in April 2023, and Hinduja’s firm, the only bidder, offered Rs 9,650 crore. [89] It completed the takeover in March 2025. [90] We could not confirm how Torrent’s appeal in the Supreme Court finally ended.

A similar fight over another bankrupt company, SKS Power, ended in February 2026 when the Supreme Court dismissed Torrent Power’s appeals. [39]

Cipla, the deal that never was. In September 2023 several newspapers reported, citing unnamed sources, that Torrent had made a non-binding offer for the founding family’s one-third stake in Cipla, a company larger than Torrent itself. [91] Torrent never confirmed it. The reported talks stalled over price. [92][93]

Controversies and allegations

One point first. In the court and regulatory records we read, none names Samir Mehta personally as a wrongdoer. The matters below concern Torrent companies, and in one case his elder brother. The one document addressed to him by name is a US FDA warning letter, sent to him as head of the company, and it did criticise management oversight. He has chaired Torrent Pharma since 2014 and Torrent Power since April 2018, so most of these matters arose on his watch; the Agra contract was signed earlier.

Electoral bonds and the timing of a tax waiver

Allegation: After the Supreme Court struck down the electoral bond scheme in February 2024 and donor data was published that March, a group of news outlets working together (Newslaundry, Scroll and The News Minute) reported that Torrent Power and Torrent Pharmaceuticals had bought bonds worth Rs 184 crore between May 2019 and January 2024: Rs 106.5 crore by the power company and Rs 77.5 crore by the drug company. The BJP encashed Rs 137 crore of this, the Congress Rs 22 crore and the Aam Aadmi Party Rs 8 crore, with smaller sums going to other parties. [94][96][97] The reports set these purchases beside government decisions that, they said, benefited the group. The main example: on 27 May 2019, the month of the first purchases, the Maharashtra government ordered the Bhiwandi municipal corporation not to recover about Rs 285 crore of property tax, interest and fines from Torrent Power. [95][97] The reports suggested a possible link. They did not produce a document showing one.

Response: The reports we read record no statement from the group on the bonds, and do not say whether it was asked. A Torrent Power spokesperson, asked about them by IndiaSpend, said he could not comment. [97] On the tax itself, Torrent Power’s position, set out in a 2024 share-sale document, is that the demand was wrongly raised: a 1996 state notification exempted the state electricity utility from such taxes, and Torrent was working only as that utility’s franchisee. [1] Newslaundry reported that the waiver followed Torrent telling the government that recovery would mean higher tariffs for Bhiwandi’s residents. [95] In dismissing a wider plea, the Supreme Court noted that bond purchases had been made under a law passed by Parliament. [98]

What happened next:

• 2 August 2024: the Supreme Court dismissed petitions asking for a court-monitored special investigation into alleged quid pro quo in electoral bonds generally, saying it would be premature when ordinary legal remedies had not been tried. [98]
• December 2024: Torrent Power disclosed that a public-interest petition by an NGO, challenging the 2019 tax waiver, was pending in the Bombay High Court. [1]
• January 2025: a petitioner asked the Supreme Court to review its August 2024 order. [99]
• After bonds ended, Torrent Power’s accounts show donations to an electoral trust: Rs 65 crore in 2024-25 and Rs 83 crore in 2025-26. [23]

Status: We found no report of any investigation, charge or finding against Torrent or the Mehtas arising from the bonds. We could not confirm the outcome of the review petition, or the present state of the High Court petition on the tax waiver.

Drug quality: the US FDA warning letter and failed samples

Allegation: On 8 October 2019 the US Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter, addressed to Samir Mehta, after inspecting Torrent’s Indrad plant in Gujarat that April. It said the company had not followed its own validation protocol for a manufacturing process and had released batches to the US market despite validation failures. It said the company had invalidated 60-70% of its initial out-of-specification test results between January 2017 and March 2019, and called weak investigation of such results a repeat finding. It noted similar problems at the Dahej plant, said repeated failures at multiple sites showed that executive management oversight was inadequate, and warned that new approvals could be withheld. [35][100] A second letter that month went to the chief executive of Torrent’s US subsidiary about its plant in Pennsylvania. [102] Separately, Scroll reported in March 2024 that four Torrent products had failed quality tests or been found substandard between 2018 and 2023, three of them by the Maharashtra and Gujarat drug regulators. [96]

Response: On the Indrad letter, Torrent said it did not expect any disruption to supplies or existing revenues. [101] We found no company statement on the Pennsylvania letter in the report we read. Scroll’s report records no response from Torrent on the failed samples and does not say whether it was asked. [96]

What happened next:

• 2022-23: the FDA re-inspected Indrad in September 2022, and the plant remained under an adverse classification, with new approvals on hold. [5]
• May 2022: Torrent shut the Pennsylvania liquids business. [6]
• August 2023: the Dahej plant received an inspection report classed “voluntary action indicated”, which lifted the hold on approvals from that site. [103][4]
• August 2024: Indrad received the same classification after a June 2024 inspection, nearly five years after the warning letter. [104]
• September-October 2024: India’s central drug regulator listed a batch of Shelcal 500 as not of standard quality. Torrent said the sample was “non-genuine and spurious” and not made by it; the regulator’s next alert classed the Shelcal samples as spurious, that is, counterfeit. [105][106]

Status: In its 2024-25 annual report Torrent said all four plants that supply the US had been cleared by the FDA and that new product approvals had resumed. [3] We could not confirm whether the FDA has formally closed out the 2019 warning letter.

The valsartan and losartan lawsuits in the US

Allegation: Torrent is one of many drug makers sued in a large consolidated case in a US federal court in New Jersey over blood-pressure medicines recalled in 2018-19 for impurities. Plaintiffs allege the drugs were adulterated and bring claims including breach of warranty and fraud. [40]

Response: Torrent contests liability in court and asked for the claims to be thrown out before trial. Its annual report attributes the impurities to an ingredient made by outside suppliers. [40][8]

What happened next:

• March 2024: the judge dismissed some claims and sent others towards trial. No liability was decided. The court did rule for the plaintiffs on some preliminary points, including that the defendants’ labelling amounted to express warranties; whether those were breached, and the fraud claim, were left for trial, with a genuine dispute of fact on whether Torrent’s products were adulterated. [40]
• July 2026: the court was still issuing rulings in the wider litigation; the ruling we read concerns another defendant. [41]

Status: Pending. We found no verdict against Torrent and no settlement by it.

The Agra franchise and the CAG

Allegation: India’s national auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), examined how Uttar Pradesh’s state distribution company handed Agra’s electricity supply to Torrent Power for 20 years from April 2010. Its report said changes made after the financial bid was opened amounted to “undue favour” to Torrent. It put the losses already caused at Rs 421.12 crore up to March 2012, with a further Rs 4,601.12 crore to come over the remaining 18 years of the contract. [36] The criticism is aimed at the state utility’s decisions; Torrent is the beneficiary named. A power engineers’ federation demanded cancellation, and in 2012 Reuters reported a citywide backlash in Agra, with residents accusing the company of overcharging and Torrent staff being assaulted. [108][107]

Response: We found no public reply from Torrent to the CAG’s findings. The state utility told the auditor that the reserve price set for the bid had been “misconceived” and that no bidder was willing to pay more. [36] On the protests, Reuters noted that Torrent had inherited a run-down network after years of underinvestment, and a Torrent Power director told the agency: “To bring about privatisation requires enormous political will.” [107] The company also points to results: by its own figures, Agra’s losses were 58.77% at takeover and 5.36% in 2025-26. [23]

What happened next:

• June 2015: the Uttar Pradesh cabinet approved cancelling a separate franchise for Kanpur, which Business Standard reported the two sides had agreed to end; Torrent had never been able to take over there because of resistance from power employees. [108]
• July 2015: the state electricity regulator agreed to hear a public-interest challenge to the Agra agreement, filed in 2012, and set up an expert committee. [37][109]
• 14 July 2025: the Supreme Court allowed Torrent’s appeal, holding that electricity regulatory commissions (ERCs) “are not competent to entertain a matter on the singular ground of public interest”. [37][109]

Status: The regulatory challenge has been quashed. The ruling turned on jurisdiction and on whether the petition could be heard at all; it did not examine the CAG’s numbers, which remain on record as audit observations. No recovery or penalty against Torrent has been reported. The franchise runs to March 2030. [36][23]

Bhiwandi: billing protests

Allegation: Powerloom owners and local politicians in Bhiwandi have for years alleged inflated bills, fast-running meters and heavy-handed recovery by Torrent Power, and protesters in 2023 demanded its removal. [97][110]

Response: Torrent Power’s spokesperson told IndiaSpend that its meters come from vendors approved by the state utility and are inspected in the company’s own accredited laboratory before installation, and that bills rose because consumption rose once outages ended. “Check the timing of these protests, they have always happened for electoral gains. Torrent is a soft target, that’s all,” he said. IndiaSpend reported that the company could not share testing records for powerloom meters. [97] In 2023 the company called the protesters’ allegations baseless. [110]

Status: Not tested in court, as far as we could find; no court or regulator has ruled against Torrent on Bhiwandi billing. The franchise agreement runs to January 2027 and the company has applied for renewal. [23]

The union-territory power sale and the CCI finding

Allegation: Two things. First, a public-interest petition in the Bombay High Court challenged the sale of 51% of the power distributor of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu. The High Court suspended the tender in March 2021 and the Supreme Court stayed that order in July 2021. The reports we read do not name the petitioner or the grounds. [111][112] Second, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) later took up the fact that Torrent Power had completed the purchase without first notifying it. [38]

Response: Before the CCI, Torrent argued that the Electricity Act gave the power regulator, not the CCI, jurisdiction, that the bid ran on tight timelines which bidders should not be penalised for following, and that competition was not harmed. [38] On the court challenge we found no comment from Torrent beyond its stock-exchange notices. [111]

Status: Closed, with a finding against Torrent Power and no penalty. On 14 January 2025 the CCI rejected the jurisdiction argument and held that Torrent Power “has failed to notify the Transaction to the Commission within stipulated time and also consummated the same”. Citing the bid timelines, overlapping laws, the absence of harm to competition and the company’s cooperation, it said that “the Commission decides not to impose any penalty on TPL”. [38] We could not confirm the final outcome of the High Court petition.

Price and tax notices

Allegation: India’s drug price regulator raised a demand on Torrent Pharmaceuticals in 2017 alleging overcharging, which the company contested in the Gujarat High Court. Its 2025-26 annual report lists two further overcharging notices, of about Rs 60 lakh and Rs 6.63 crore. [3][2] Separately, in November 2025 a central GST authority in Ahmedabad imposed a penalty of about Rs 41.3 crore over what it called an erroneous refund on exports. [113]

Response: Torrent says its representations on the 2017 demand were “favourably considered” by the regulator, which then issued a revised, lower demand, and that it may appeal against the newer notices. [3][2] On the GST order it said it would appeal and expected no material financial impact. [113]

Status: The 2017 pricing matter was settled in 2024-25, by the company’s account. The newer pricing notices were open, and the GST order under appeal, as of the 2025-26 annual report. [3][2]

Claims of political proximity

Allegation: The same group of news outlets described Sudhir Mehta, Samir’s elder brother, as “considered close” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, citing his role in a Gujarat business group in 2003 and company donations to the BJP that go back before electoral bonds. [95]

Response: We found no on-record comment from Samir Mehta or the group on this description.

Status: This is an unproven claim. The “considered close” description concerns Sudhir Mehta, not Samir. The donations were made by group companies, which Samir Mehta chaired when the bonds were bought, and they also went to the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party and others. [94] No court, regulator or auditor has found that any benefit was given to Torrent in return for donations.

This section reflects what was on the public record as of 2 October 2026.

Giving back

The family’s charity carries the founder’s name. The UNM Foundation traces its start to a trust set up in 1982, and uses his motto: “Think of others also, when you think about yourself.” [42]

Its best-known association is the U.N. Mehta Institute of Cardiology and Research Centre in Ahmedabad. This is a Gujarat government institution that took the founder’s name in 1996 after a donation from the family trust; it has since grown to more than 1,200 beds. [43]

The foundation’s own flagship is REACH, a child-health programme. It has screened about 1.74 lakh children and treated more than 70,000 for malnutrition and anaemia across 1,900 villages. It also runs a 150-bed children’s hospital near Surat. [22][61] Other work includes public parks in Gujarat and a free arts festival in Ahmedabad. [42][61]

At the end of March 2024, to mark U.N. Mehta’s hundredth birth anniversary, the family pledged Rs 5,000 crore to the foundation over five years from 1 April 2024, “over and above the statutory CSR contributions of the Torrent Group companies”. [59]

“The UNM Foundation will make sincere endeavours to utilise this amount for unique social causes; without any beneficiary barriers of caste, religion, gender and economic strata,” Samir said. [59]

How fast the money is flowing is not clear from public records. The EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2025 ranked the brothers ninth, with giving of Rs 189 crore. [114] That figure and the pledge may not be measured the same way, and we could not find a published year-by-year account of the pledge.

In May 2026 TIME magazine named Sudhir and Samir Mehta, together, to its TIME100 Philanthropy list. [61]

Succession

Torrent has handled succession early, in public and in stages.

Sudhir handed Torrent Pharma to Samir in 2014 and Torrent Power in 2018. [17][25] The third generation is now in executive seats. Sudhir’s son Jinal is vice-chairman and managing director of Torrent Power and chairman of Torrent Gas. His brother Varun leads the diagnostics and electricals businesses. [1][34][81]

On Samir’s side, Aman Mehta, a graduate of Boston University with an MBA from Columbia University, has been with the group for more than ten years. He led the integration of Unichem, joined the Torrent Pharma board in August 2022 and became its managing director on 1 August 2025. [18][115][116] His brother Shaan also works in the drug business. [51]

There is a house rule. Family members must start as management trainees and spend time in the field before they are given charge of anything. [54]

Ownership has been arranged for the long run too. The four family trusts are split two to each branch. Their stated aims, as set out in a recent filing, include to “maintain harmony, peace and goodwill among the Mehta family and to avoid any possible dispute/litigation”, and “to provide for matters like full or partial exit of a particular family branch from the business”. [34]

Samir Mehta himself is not leaving yet. He turned 63 in September 2026. His current term as executive chairman of Torrent Pharma runs to 31 March 2030. [4]

What their journey teaches

Own a corner the giants ignore. U.N. Mehta could not outspend the multinationals, so he sold psychiatric drugs to psychiatrists and nothing else. [53] Fifty years later Torrent still earns about three-quarters of its India revenue from medicines for long-term conditions. [2] A small firm does not need the whole market. It needs a part of it that it can serve better than anyone.

Borrow for a deal only if you can see the repayment. Elder, Unichem and JB were all bought with debt, and analysts questioned the price of both Elder and JB. [64][71] What made it work was the discipline afterwards: debt fell from 2.37 times EBITDA to 0.6 times before the next big cheque was written. [7][2] The borrowing gets the headlines; the repaying is the skill.

Admit a mistake in rupees, early. The US liquids business was shut four years after it was bought, at a cost of Rs 485 crore. [85] In the 1990s the group sold a prized power plant to fix its balance sheet. [57] Neither decision was pleasant. Both cost less than waiting would have.

Losing an auction is not losing the plan. Torrent lost the Ahmedabad IPL team in 2021 and bought two-thirds of it in 2025. [79][44] It topped the first Reliance Capital auction, failed to stop a second round in court, and did not bid again. [89] Wanting an asset is different from wanting it at any price.

In a regulated business, public trust is part of the licence. Torrent’s numbers on power losses are among the best in India. [28] Yet audit findings in Agra, anger in Bhiwandi and questions about political donations have followed it. [36][97][94] When your customers cannot choose another supplier, being efficient is not enough. You also have to be seen to be fair.

A profile for general reading, based on public records and reporting as of 2 October 2026. Not investment, tax or legal advice.

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