Sahara India Pariwar is an Indian conglomerate established in 1978 with interests in finance, infrastructure, housing, media and entertainment. In 2010, two Sahara companies raised thousands of crores from investors through optionally fully convertible debentures without approval from SEBI as required. SEBI ordered Sahara to repay investors within 3 months, but Sahara failed to comply. The Supreme Court later ruled in favor of SEBI, ordering Sahara to provide details of over 2.5 crore investors to SEBI, though the documents were found to be incomplete and unrealistic, raising suspicions of money laundering.

3. Introduction of Sahara Pariwar
• Sahara India Pariwar is an Indian conglomerate company
established in 1978 headquarter in Lucknow, India
• It has a business interest in finance, infrastructure and
housing, media and entertainment.
• Peak of success in a very short period.
• The group is a major promoter of sports in India such as
Indian hockey team, Indian Cricket Team,etc
• Once Sahara was listed in top 100 trusted brands of India.

4. How Sahara falls into trouble
 In 2010, two Sahara Group Companies Sahara India Real
Estate Corporation (SIREC) and Sahara Housing
Investment Corporation (SHIC) were raising large sums
of money –Thousands of Crores from investors by
issuing Optionally Fully Convertible Debentures to the
public.

5. Trivia
 These two companies were raising thousands of crores
but SEBI was not fully aware of why they were doing so
or what they were doing with the collected money.
Ideally speaking, before such an issue happens, the
company is expected to file a request with SEBI, get it
approved and then start the collection of public
money.

6. Terms to be understood
 Ipo: Initial Public Offering, process through which a
company issues shares to the public for the very first time.
 DRHP: Draft Red Herring Prospectus is the biodata of the
company and it contains all information of the company
like Financial information, Objectives, Promoters and
management details, past performance, Capital Structure,
Issue information etc. After deeply analyzing the DRHP,
the SEBI decides, whether to grant the permission to the
company or not to get listed.

7.  30th september 2009, Sahara Prime city which was a part of
Sahara group submitted DRHP for issue of IPO.
After analyzing DRHP, SEBI received a complaint mentioning
these companies used ODCF in wrong way. (OFCD- Optionally Fully
Convertible Debenture, type of debenture in which the investor has the option to convert the
debenture to equity shares and become the shareholder. Company needs permission for issue
of OFCD, less that 50 units, permission from ROC and more than 50 from SEBI)
 Sahara group raised 20000 Cr funds from 2.5 Cr investors using
OFCD without taking permission from SEBI.
SEBI asked to repay to the investors within 3 months but Sahara
group failed to do so.

8. Case was taken into the Supreme Court, ordered
Sahara Group to send details of investors to SEBI,
127 trucks were sent to SEBI with all the
documents of the investors.
 After analyzing the documents, SEBI found the
documents were incomplete and unrealistic hence
this matter can be of MONEY LAUNDRY.