New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: An entrepreneur from Odisha has made it to the 2024 Hurun India Rich List, which saw Gautam Adani surpassing Mukesh Ambani to secure the top position.
With the assessed net worth of Rs 4,900 crore, Tara Ranjan Patnaik and family, the promoters of Falcon Marine Exports, have been featured at 540 rank in the rich list among Indian conglomerates.
Falcon Group, which was established by the ‘accidental’ entrepreneur who comes from a family of lawyers in 1985, is the largest integrated seafood exporter of the country. Over the years, the group with its diversified ventures in seafood, animal feed, french fries, trading and real estate sector has established itself as a key player in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Dubai.
Tara Ranjan ventured into aquaculture in 1978, supplying prawns to major export companies, after a failure with fishing trawlers business. Seven years later, he founded Falcon Marine Export Private Limited in Bhubaneswar. He then set up the first processing unit at Mancheswar in Bhubaneswar in 1993 and the second in 1994 at Paradip.
In 2008, his son Parthajeet Patnaik, an MBA from London, joined his father’s business and the same year, the company made a foray into real estate and Falcon Real Estate Pvt Ltd came into existence.
Tara Ranjan was conferred with the MPEDA (Marine Products Export Development Authority) award in 2017 for being the country’s highest value exporter for the past 15 years.
The company’s impressive growth is attributed to its robust operational activities, supported by a vast procurement network comprising 5,000 contract farms and five automated processing plants in Odisha and West Bengal.
THE HARUN RICH LIST
HURUN report is a comprehensive statistical report published world-wide by chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf, the promoter of the Luxembourg-based firm.
According to the report , India produced a billionaire every five days last year. In 2023, the country had 259 billionaires. The list this year has expanded considerably, with more than 1,500 individuals possessing a net worth of Rs 1,000 crore or more. It shows a 150% growth compared to seven years ago, Business Today reported.
