A businessman to the core. That was how Vikram Aggarwal was described by his family and friends when his name started doing the rounds in the IPL betting scam.
Sources said the present chairman of VVA Hotels Pvt Ltd began his career with Gupta & Company, which was into Garment Manufacturing Solutions. He rose in the ranks to the highest level to oversee the entire operations of that company. Subsequently, he quit his job and started his own venture in the garment business under the banner of Aggarwal Dresses in the late 1980s. The company got recognition by the Union Government as an export venture.
Known to multiply his capital through diversification, he entered the hospitality industry by becoming the franchisee of Fortune Select Palms, a part of the ITC Group of Hotels, with VVA Hotels Pvt Ltd on Old Maha-balipuram Road in 2006. Last year, VVA Hotels added Radisson Blu Hotel Chennai City Centre, a part of Carlson Rezidor Group of Hotels on Ethiraj Salai, to its fold.
The company was set to expand its hospitality base in Mumbai as well.
Sources said that the company’s total assets were worth about Rs 800 crore and was growing year on year.
Speaking to Express, Abudu Kumar Rajaratnam, Vikram Aggarwal’s advocate, said there was no material evidence to substantiate the allegations levelled against the hotelier.
“There was no proof to show that he was in any way related to the betting or fixing as claimed so,” he said.
Meanwhile, Vikram’s wife Bandana Aggarwal told the media that her husband was not absconding but was in the custody of CB CID sleuths who picked him up from their Adyar residence at 7.30 am on Monday.
But the CB CID officials, while denying that they picked up the hotelier, maintained that they have summoned him to appear before them on May 30.