“Bring me a paper and pen,” said Darshan Patel, smack in the middle of a Powerpoint presentation by strategy and consulting firm Accenture in his Ahmedabad office.

Patel is the founder of personal-care company Vini Cosmetics—the one behind the breakout success Fogg deodorant. 

The PPT on go-to market strategy was quickly shut down as Patel took to jotting down numbers on a page, much like any dhanda guy who runs a small business. “I sell my product for Rs 225, I keep around Rs 160, and this is the cost of the product. So, I have a 70–75% margin,” said Patel, before passing the paper around the room.

“What’s the need for a presentation, we don’t want all this,” an executive recalled Patel saying, much to the bewilderment of the five Accenture analysts, all of whom had come fully suited up. Another oddity in the mostly plain shirt-wearing meeting room.

This was how co-founders—and brothers—Darshan and Dipam Patel worked. 

“They were typical Gujarati founders, and throughout their life, had run businesses this way,” said a sales manager.

But all that changed when they sold their stake to global private-equity firm KKR in June 2021. KKR acquired a 54% stake in Vini for $625 million, valuing the company at a whopping $1.2 billion—the biggest fund infusion by a private-equity player in Indian FMCG to date.

The deal had many scratching their heads.

“KKR bought it at a very expensive price—almost 35X its then Ebitda,” said a former executive. “The profitability of the company was close to Rs 200 crore then, and they bought it on the assumption that Vini had done well pre-Covid.”

The real problems began after that. There was no clear-cut handover between the founders and KKR-backed new management. “Since the founders still hold a 10% stake, and they’re close to early investor Westbridge, which holds another 23%, they continue to have unsaid control,” said a Fogg executive. 

Darshan, in particular, is known to be a prolific brand-builder—credited with creating iconic brands such as Moov, Krack, Itchguard, and Dermicool at Paras Pharmaceuticals, the brothers’ erstwhile family business.