Documents released by Hindu temple conglomerate Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams show that its net worth is Rs 2.26 lakh crore, The Times of India reported. The conglomerate released a white paper on Saturday detailing its investments and deposits .
The Devasthanams’ net worth is more than the market capitalisation of several major Indian firms, including information technology company Wipro and cement major UltraTech, PTI reported.
At the close of trading on Friday, Wipro had a market capitalisation of Rs 2.14 lakh crore, while the figure for UltraTech Cement was 1.99 lakh crore. The temple conglomerate’s net worth is also more than several state-owned firms such as the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and NTPC Limited.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Executive Officer AV Dharma Reddy said that in the past three years, bank fixed deposit investments of the conglomerate have increased by Rs 2,900 crore.
“Investments in the form of fixed deposits at various nationalised banks in 2019 were Rs 13,025 crore,” he said, according to The Times of India. “Despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, [the] trust’s investments in bank FDs have gone up to Rs 15,938 crore as on September this year.”
Reddy said that during the pandemic, some “vested interests” had questioned whether the organisation could pay employees’ salaries without withdrawing money from its fixed deposits.
“But today, we have managed to add Rs 2,900 crore to our fixed deposits after comfortably paying off salaries and after meeting all our expenditures, which goes on to showcase the strong financial prudence of the TTD.”
The conglomerate administers several temples in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha, Haryana, Maharashtra and New Delhi. Among the temples that it oversees is the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple located in the Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh. The Tirupati temple is among the wealthiest in the world.
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