The Dempo Business House is the leading corporate group of Goa whose modern-era business operations commenced in the year 1941. The highly diversified conglomerate’s major activities today comprise the production and export of calcined petroleum coke, shipbuilding & repair, newspaper publishing and the media, manufacture of pig iron, baby foods, real estate development, sports promotion, the travel business, renewable energy, and mining. The Group, with a human resource strength of 1000, is also well known for having taken a leadership position in social responsibility in the State and the region.
The businesses were pioneered by the late Vasantrao S Dempo, whose ground breaking achievements in Goan industry earned him a Padmashree, and by his brother, the late Vaikunthrao S. Dempo. The son of the former, the late Vasudeva V Dempo, further consolidated the industrial activities of the conglomerate. The Group Chair is his son, Mr. Shrinivas V Dempo, 46, a management post graduate in Industrial Finance & Administration from Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, USA. Sharing his business and responsibility concerns is his wife, Ms. Pallavi S. Dempo, an MBA from Pune University, who handles the media businesses and its charitable trusts.
The eminence of the Dempo name emerges from its status as the foremost business family in Goa and the Konkan, with a commercial history going back several centuries and a record of social responsibility as long. Under the current Group Chair, a new path has been struck in charting the direction and pursuit of the businesses, coupled with creative, and ethical choices in corporate social responsibility while expanding the businesses exponentially, thus contributing to nation-building in endeavours that are exemplary of good corporate citizenship.
In the course of his leadership so far, Chairman Shrinivas V. Dempo has made effective an expansion of the existing businesses, mergers and acquisitions, new lines of activity, the benchmarking of products and processes to international standards in quality and environment management set by the International Standards Organisation, the initiation and deepening of corporate social responsibility programmes, and the introduction of progressive people management systems, enterprise resource planning and corporate sustainability reporting into the businesses. By ensuring these achievements the Group’s entrepreneurial vision in the medium term was realised – the metamorphosis of a family-run business house into a modern, professionally-streamlined group of forward-looking, socially- committed enterprises in line with high standards of corporate governance and good corporate citizenship.
Dempo has achieved growth that has been both organic and inorganic (shipbuilding, calcined petroleum coke manufacture, the media and sports businesses) as well as geographical- upcountry to Western, Central, Southern and Eastern India, as well as overseas, to China in the East and Denmark in the West.
A recent, thorough restructuring of the Group’s entities has led to the creation of a parent/ holding company, V S Dempo Holdings Pvt. Ltd, with the remainder of the group companies being its subsidiaries.
The Dempo tradition of doing business with entities of substance has seen the fostering of close relations with important clients – Indian and international. The Group flagship had strengthened, for instance, the special relationship with the key clients of the erstwhile mining and export business, Nippon Steel Corporation and Mitsui Limited, both Japanese giants. Among past and present clients of the foods business are foreign majors, Glaxo, Dumex and Heinz, of the shipbuilding business are national heavyweights, the Indian Navy, Larsen and Toubro, National Institute of Ocean Technology, Mundhra Port & SEZ, United Shippers, M. Pallonji, Jindal ITF Ltd and Adani Enterprises, and of the petroleum coke business are global majors, Rio Tinto, Aluminium Pechiney, DUBAL, and prominent national firms- NALCO, HINDALCO, INDAL, TELCO, BHEL and Jindal Steel.
The Dempo Group has continued and strengthened the tradition of corporate social responsibility that it is known for. The pillars of the Dempo engagement with Goa (population 1.5 Million) and Goan society are higher education, cultural enrichment, environmental conservation, sporting excellence, public health & cleanliness and affirmative action.
Research and Development have been an invaluable part of the Dempo businesses. Apart from the proprietary development of a unique iron ore product, Low Phos Magnetite Concentrate (LPMC) with low alumina content for the erstwhile Dempo iron ore and export business, the development of a unique instant porridge formula with the goodness of milk, fruits, nuts, dates, fibre, wheat and maize for the processed foods business, has been part of our R & D record. Coming to calcined petroleum coke manufacture where scarcity of good quality raw petroleum coke of the right grade and properties has been a challenge in recent years, an initiative resulted in a special process of blending the raw material purchased from different sources, enabling consistency in product quality and supply.
The philosophy in the Dempo Group when it comes to corporate governance is the belief that good corporate actions resulting from corporate governance balance the interests of all stakeholders, while satisfying the tests of accountability, transparency and fair play.
Profit tempered by Ethics is the way embraced by the Dempo Corporate Group. Ethics is the differentiator that sets us apart.
The long- term vision is to become one of the top five most admired business houses in the country by means of a strategy that weds excellence in operations to sterling corporate responsibility.
The Dempo mission of business, which is that of commercial activity at the cutting edge of professionalism suffused with a robust social responsibility in India while acquiring a larger global profile, informs each activity that the Group undertakes.
As part of the practice of responsible governance, directors and employees are expected to follow the key Dempo values of integrity, fairness, solicitude, teamwork, innovation and social responsibility in all their dealings.