Vikas WSP is a guar gum powder manufacturer whose factory has been silent since September 2020 - a company that once supplied the world’s biggest food brands from the edge of the Rajasthan desert but is now being sold through an insolvency process that has dragged on for over four years without a final order. Founded in 1988 by Mr. Bajrang Dass Aggarwal, it built its name on a single speciality: extracting and refining water-soluble polymers from guar beans, a crop that thrives in the arid zone where the company set up its operations. The recurring thread is a business built on process certifications and organic credentials that won the trust of multinationals - and then lost everything when financial distress handed control to a resolution professional and shut the production line.
Business segments
A single engine, now idle - a guar gum powder manufacturer that once served food and oilfield customers across continents, currently under insolvency resolution with no business operations.
1. Guar gum powder: the thickening agent behind food and oil wells
The company makes one product - guar gum powder - in food and industrial grades from a single plant in guar-growing country, but hasn’t produced a kilogram since September 2020.
- Sole product, two markets - every rupee the company ever earned came from guar gum powder, sold either into food (as a thickener and binder for products like sauces, ice cream and pet food) or into industrial applications (oil drilling, textile printing, paper making and mining).
- A 58,800-tonne capacity sitting idle - the plant’s annual production capacity across all grades is 58,800 metric tonnes, but operations have been suspended since September 2020, and no business has been conducted in any financial year since the insolvency process began.
- Certifications were the moat - the company is the sole producer of Certified Organic guar polymers, and its export units carried ISO 9001:2000 certification from DNV of Norway, HACCP certification for contamination control, and WHO-GMP compliance, which is why multinationals like Nestlé, Mars, Heinz, Unilever and Herbalife bought from it.
- Rooted in the desert - guar is a xerophytic plant that grows best in the monsoon-fed arid zone of western Rajasthan, right where the company’s operations are located, and the shift to irrigated seeds has reduced the crop’s dependence on rain while raising yields.
- Sold across largely independent geographies - customers are spread across the US, Europe, India and other jurisdictions, with two domestic customers each accounting for more than 10% of segment sales.
Group structure and partners
The company stands alone - no subsidiaries, no holding company - but is tangled in receivables and guarantees to entities controlled by its own key managers.
- No corporate family - Vikas WSP has no holding, subsidiary or associate companies, making it a standalone entity with a paid-up share capital of roughly 20.4 crore equity shares.
- Related-party receivables of over INR 214 crore - as of March 2025, the company was owed INR 21,468.89 lakhs from three related entities - Vikas Proppant & Granaries Limited, Vikas Chemi Gums India Ltd, and Vikas Dall and General Mill - all controlled by key managerial personnel.
- A corporate guarantee on the side - it has also provided a corporate guarantee of INR 4,050 lakhs to related parties, adding another layer of exposure beyond the trade receivables.
- Promoters hold a small stake - promoter and promoter group shareholding stood at 14.56% as of FY24, with the founder’s family - including Bajrang Dass Aggarwal (8.30%) and Bimla Devi Jindal (6.25%) - among the key shareholders before the founder’s death in September 2020.
- Three banks and a tax office call the shots - the Committee of Creditors driving the insolvency process consists of Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Union Bank of India, while the Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Hissar, is the largest operational creditor.