Venky's

Venkateshwara Hatcheries Private Limited, Venky's London Limited

Type	Private Limited Subsidiary of V H Group
Founded	1971
Headquarters	Pune, Maharashtra, India
Website	Venkys.com

Venky's (India) Limited is a subsidiary of V H Group, an Indian company that specialises in chicken meat processing, and pharmaceutical products for both poultry and human usage.

Status

Today, the diversified VH Group is a USD 1 billion conglomerate and a large Asian poultry company. The group has diversified into 29 fields including: poultry, processed food, animal vaccines, pharma and healthcare products. The company's Specific Pathogen Free Egg unit (in technical collaboration with SPAFAS Inc. USA) is among four such units in the world and the only one of its kind in the developing world.

Forbes ranked Venky's as 67 among the 100 best global small companies in the year 2000.^[1]

In December 2010, the group launched Venky's Express, a ready to eat chicken outlet. The first outlet opened in Pune, with Akon performing at the opening.^[2]

Some people have called into question Venky's business sense since they acquired Blackburn Rovers F.C. in 2010. Since they took over the club, questionable decisions to sack managers and other administrative staff without reasons have been a regular occurrence, leading to much anger being expressed from supporters, this also coupled with poor results on the pitch which saw the club relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2011/12 season.^[3]

Blackburn Rovers Football Club

In November 2010, Venky's set up a new holding company, Venky's London Ltd, and bought a 99.9% stake in Blackburn Rovers FC, spending £23 million on the deal and taking on around £20million of the club's debt.^[4] After sacking Sam Allardyce as the club's manager,^[5] Steve Kean was given the job, an appointment which was shrouded in a great deal of controversy since Kean's agent Jerome Anderson had earlier played a major role in advising Venky's during the takeover of the club in the preceding months.^[6][7][8] Venky's oversaw an unsuccessful period resulting in relegation to the Championship at the end of the 2011–12 Premier League season ending an 11-year run in the top flight.^[9][10][11] Despite Kean leaving Blackburn Rovers in September 2012, criticism of Venky's running of the club has continued, with both fans and the media calling them into question.^[12]

Former Blackburn defender Henning Berg replaced Kean as manager but following a poor run of results, he was sacked on 27 December 2012. Berg's reign lasted only 57 days,^[13][14][15] while on 19 March 2013, the club dismissed his successor, Michael Appleton, after another two-month reign.^[16] In December 2012, the club was reported to be running at a loss of around £2 million a month.^[17]

Later in 2013 caretaker manager Gary Bowyer was announced as the new full-time manager. Gary Bowyer was then fired in November 2015, with Paul Lambert being installed as new manager. After only a matter of 5 months Paul Lambert then left Blackburn Rovers. Seven weeks later Owen Coyle was then announced as the new Blackburn Rovers Manager. The appointment of Owen Coyle was met with some anger from the Blackburn Rovers fans with many of the supporters branding them as "a disgrace".^[18]

Venkys were recently approached by a group of investors known as "Seneca" who wanted to help Venky's run the club after Venky's Ltd run up debts of £104.2m.^[19] However this offer was ignored by Venkys Ltd.

On the 15th August 2016, a mass of leaked information about the wrongdoing happening within Blackburn Rovers was pushed out on to social media and passed to many journalists, papers and most of the Blackburn Rovers fans. This led to a number of fans to once again protest against Venky's ownership of the football club.^[20]

References