has begun paying royalty to a privately held company controlled by its promoter family, adding a new payment from the listed battery maker to its largest shareholder group.
The company paid ₹6.76 crore in royalty to Amara Raja Enterprises Pvt. Ltd in the year ended March 2026, according to filings reviewed by Mint. The payment was equivalent to 0.05% of the company’s ₹13,814 crore revenue and 0.8% of its ₹896 crore net profit during that period. The privately held entity, formerly known as RN Galla Family Pvt. Ltd, holds a 32.9% stake in the listed company.
The payment comes as Indian business families increasingly seek to formalize and monetize the value of their brand names. The Aditya Birla Group, for instance, recently under which listed companies including Grasim Industries Ltd, Hindalco Industries Ltd and Novelis Inc. will pay the promoter group 0.25% of revenue, subject to a cap. The move followed similar arrangements at some other large Indian business groups.
For Amara Raja, however, the timing and rationale of the payment raise a different set of questions. The listed company has used the Amara Raja name for years, but the royalty payment to the promoter-owned entity appears to be new. Its filings don’t separately explain what the royalty covers, when the agreement was signed or how the payment is calculated.
Amara Raja Enterprises owns the Amara Raja trademark, according to publicly available trademark records, although Mint couldn’t independently establish that the ₹6.76 crore payment was specifically for use of the brand. Amara Raja Energy & Mobility didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The promoter entity was renamed Amara Raja Enterprises Pvt. Ltd from RN Galla Family Pvt. Ltd, according to the filings reviewed by Mint.
The royalty also comes against the backdrop of a of the Galla family’s ownership. In early 2025, founder Ramachandra Naidu Galla transferred the promoter company’s shares into four family trusts as part of a succession arrangement. The trusts now collectively hold the promoter entity, which remains the largest shareholder in the listed company.
The privately held Amara Raja Enterprises is itself a diversified business rather than a pure holding company. Its subsidiaries include Amara Raja Infra Pvt. Ltd, an engineering procurement and construction company, and Mangal Industries Pvt. Ltd, an auto-components maker. Its standalone business also includes a foods operation.
To be sure, royalty is not entirely new to the Amara Raja group. The listed company had earlier charged royalty to its electronics business until 2016-17, before that arrangement was discontinued. What is different now is the direction of the payment: the listed company is paying a promoter-controlled entity.
“The fact that this is the first time the listed company is paying royalty to the promoter-owned entity is, in my view, the key issue,” Sonam Chandwani, managing partner at KS Legal & Associates, said.
“If the promoter family has owned the trademark and the company has been using it for several years without any royalty being paid, it is reasonable to ask why the arrangement has been introduced only now,” Chandwani said, adding that the timing and rationale warrant greater transparency for shareholders.
While, the payment is relatively small, but for investors, the more important question may be less about the size of the payment than why the arrangement was introduced, what intellectual property it covers and how the amount will be determined in future years.