TVS Motor’s Control Block Is Now a Family Fight

VS Trust holds 66.55 per cent of TVS Holdings, the listed parent that owns 50.26 per cent of TVS Motor Company. TVS Motor closed October 12 at a market value of Rs 1,87,199 crore.

That control chain is now the subject of an open split inside the family of Venu Srinivasan, chairman emeritus of TVS Motor. He and his son, Sudarshan Venu, say a succession plan is already done. His wife, Mallika Srinivasan, and their daughter, Lakshmi Venu, said on October 12 that no economic settlement has been reached.

A Trust Holds the Keys to TVS Motor

TVS Motor is not owned, in the ordinary sense, by the four people now arguing about it. The operating company is controlled through TVS Holdings. TVS Holdings is controlled through VS Trust. Company filings name Venu Srinivasan as trustee of that trust.

A June 2025 shareholding pattern filed by TVS Holdings shows VS Trust with 66.55 per cent of TVS Holdings, or 1,34,64,665 shares. The promoter group as a whole holds 74.45 per cent. The public holds 25.55 per cent of 2,02,32,104 equity shares.

WHO HOLDS TVS HOLDINGS

Lakshmi Venu is managing director of Sundaram-Clayton, the die-casting company carved out of the old group structure, and she holds 0.82 per cent of the holding company in her own name. Sudarshan Venu is chairman and managing director of TVS Motor and managing director of TVS Holdings. His direct holding in TVS Holdings is five shares.

On TVS Motor itself, TVS Holdings holds 50.26 per cent, or 23,87,82,786 shares. Mallika Srinivasan holds 30,000 shares, or 0.01 per cent. Together the promoter group owns 50.27 per cent. Foreign institutions held 20.45 per cent as of June 2026, domestic institutions 21.13 per cent, and the remaining public 8.12 per cent.

Multiply the trust’s 66.55 per cent of Holdings by Holdings’ 50.26 per cent of Motor and VS Trust sits behind 33.45 per cent of TVS Motor on a look-through basis. That is the block the family is now describing in opposite terms.

What the April 2025 Filings Put on Record

The fight did not begin with this month’s statements. It became visible in the beneficial-owner tables that listed companies must file.

SEBI told listed companies in December 2018 that they must disclose significant beneficial owners in the shareholding pattern, using the Ministry of Corporate Affairs rules notified that June. The Companies Act asks every company to file a return of significant beneficial owners with the registrar. The statute speaks of 25 per cent or such other percentage as may be prescribed; the 2018 rules set the working test at 10 per cent of shares, voting rights or distributable dividends, or the exercise of significant influence or control.

TVS Holdings’ table lists Venu Srinivasan as a significant beneficial owner of 66.55 per cent through VS Trust from December 29, 2023, and of 3.07 per cent through Srinivasan Trust from April 16, 2025. The same table lists Sudarshan Venu, recorded as a Singapore national, as a significant beneficial owner of the same 66.55 per cent through VS Trust from April 16, 2025, and of 3.07 per cent through Srinivasan Trust on the same date.

A week later, Venu Srinivasan signed a takeover disclosure dated April 24, 2025. He said he had contributed 13,73,347 equity shares of TVS Holdings, 6.79 per cent of that company, to VS Trust on April 23 by an off-market inter-se transfer. TVS Holdings’ stake in TVS Motor stayed at 50.26 per cent. Promoter holding in TVS Motor stayed at 50.27 per cent. The paper trail moved inside the promoter group, not out of it.

Lakshmi Venu has said she learned of the significant-beneficial-owner classifications from newspaper accounts of those 2025 registrar filings, and that she has sought a dialogue with her father since then. Corporate lawyer Karthik Sheshadri, who practises before the Madras High Court, said a significant-beneficial-owner declaration is not, by itself, a transfer of ownership.

A primary document can be a trust deed, an arrangement, a transfer document, that may not necessarily be disclosed as that is not a requirement, but it has to be the basis for a SBO disclosure.

Karthik Sheshadri, advocate, Madras High Court

He added that regulatory filings can be unilateral, which is why they have angered one side, and that they are often prepared at a secretarial level for the person who controls the company.

THE FILING DATES NOW IN DISPUTE

1. December 29, 2023: Venu Srinivasan is recorded as significant beneficial owner of 66.55 per cent of TVS Holdings through VS Trust.
2. March 20, 2024: Four family members date a memorandum on brand use and non-compete terms; it is executed on March 21 and disclosed on March 22. TVS Holdings told exchanges it was not a party.
3. April 16, 2025: Sudarshan Venu is recorded as significant beneficial owner of 66.55 per cent through VS Trust and 3.07 per cent through Srinivasan Trust.
4. April 23, 2025: Venu Srinivasan contributes 13,73,347 TVS Holdings shares, 6.79 per cent, to VS Trust.
5. October 12, 2026: Mallika Srinivasan and Lakshmi Venu say in a joint statement that no economic settlement has been concluded.

The trust deed that would show who may benefit from VS Trust, and on what terms, has not been put on the public record. That absence is now the argument.

The 2020 Family Split Left This Branch Open

Two family documents are being asked to do jobs they may not have been written to do.

On December 10, 2020, four branches of the family of T.V. Sundaram Iyengar signed a memorandum of family arrangement meant to line up ownership with the businesses each branch already ran, and to cut cross-holdings. Stock-exchange disclosures followed that month and in January 2021. February 4, 2022, is the date later filings treat as a hinge in the court-approved recast.

Venu Srinivasan’s branch came out with the flagship automotive interests, held through TVS Holdings, which was formed from the recast of the old Sundaram-Clayton. The separate Sundaram-Clayton that remains listed is the die-casting business. The 2020 settlement also left that branch with obligations of about Rs 2,000 crore payable to other family branches. TVS Holdings’ information memorandum records that Sundaram-Clayton sold about 7 per cent of TVS Motor in FY2022 and raised about Rs 2,100 crore, with financing tied to those settlement dues. People aligned with Venu and Sudarshan have said father and son organised that funding, and that Mallika and Lakshmi did not contribute to it.

Mallika Srinivasan and Lakshmi Venu draw a hard line under that history. The 2020 partition, they said on October 12, was done with the people who had to be at the table. No similar process of valuation, discussion and consent, they said, has taken place inside the Venu Srinivasan family, and no agreement dividing those economic interests has been concluded.

The March 2024 memorandum is the other document. Its disclosed terms were a peace treaty about names and turf, not a will.

WHAT THE 2024 MEMORANDUM COVERED

• Sudarshan’s side: He and persons controlled by him agreed not to use certain marks, including TVS, in specified die-casting work, and not to compete for a defined period in agricultural machinery, including tractors and self-propelled farm equipment.
• Mallika and Lakshmi’s side: They agreed not to use certain marks in two-wheelers, three-wheelers, financial services and real estate, and not to compete in specified vehicle businesses for a defined period.
• What it did not say: The disclosed terms do not divide shares, trusts or cash. Lakshmi Venu has called it a limited-term pact on brand use and non-compete clauses.

Venu Srinivasan has treated the later arrangements, including that memorandum, as part of a finished split. He said the businesses and assets were his, and that he had full liberty to deal with them as he thought fit for the family and the companies. He said he wanted the next generation to have ownership and control while they were still young enough to build, and that he carried out a separation between Lakshmi and Sudarshan on a fair basis at the time, after taking the family’s views into account.

Lakshmi Venu has said it is misleading to treat the 2024 family memorandum as a Venu Srinivasan family settlement. Mallika Srinivasan has said the March 2024 pact concerned trademarks, brand use and non-compete terms only, and that economic settlement and ownership were not within its scope.

Listed Values Do Not Settle Who Owns What

The first public reading of this fight has been a scoreboard. TVS Motor is huge. The company Lakshmi Venu runs is not. That gap is real. It is also the wrong unit of account if the question is whether an economic split was ever struck, and on what numbers.

TVS Motor closed October 12 at Rs 3,940.30, for a market value of Rs 1,87,199 crore. TVS Holdings closed at Rs 11,621, for Rs 23,512 crore. Sundaram-Clayton, the listed die-casting company, closed at Rs 1,199.10, for Rs 2,699 crore. Some accounts of the dispute have put Sundaram-Clayton near Rs 24,000 crore; that figure tracks TVS Holdings, the former Sundaram-Clayton, not the die-casting share that Lakshmi Venu manages.

THREE LISTED COMPANIES, OCTOBER 12

At those closes, TVS Holdings’ 50.26 per cent of TVS Motor was worth about Rs 94,086 crore on a look-through of the motorcycle stock alone. VS Trust’s 66.55 per cent of Holdings was worth about Rs 15,647 crore at Holdings’ own market price. Holdings is a core investment company and trades as a holding vehicle, so those two sums are not the same kind of money. They are still the scale of what sits behind the trustee’s name.

Venu Srinivasan has said the split was fair when it was done, and that later moves in market value should not reopen it. Mallika Srinivasan and Lakshmi Venu say there was no transparent valuation and no mutual consent in the first place. If no settlement was signed, a later rally cannot breach it. If a settlement was signed, a later rally does not, by itself, make it unfair. The missing piece is the paper.

A common market take this month has been that the daughter is asking again because the motorcycle stock did unusually well. TVS Motor’s listed value has in fact pulled far ahead of the die-casting share. That observation does not answer the filing question. Sudarshan Venu’s significant-beneficial-owner status arrived in April 2025 through a trust his father still trustees. Lakshmi Venu’s name is a 0.82 per cent line on the same register of the company that controls the motorcycle maker.

TAFE Belongs to the Amalgamations Group

Venu Srinivasan has put Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd into the fairness argument. He said Mallika Srinivasan, who controls TAFE, had made clear her intention to pass ownership and control of TAFE to Lakshmi, who is already vice chairman.

TAFE appointed Lakshmi Venu vice chairman on March 17, 2025. Mallika Srinivasan is chairman and managing director of TAFE. Both women say that fact does not settle TVS.

TAFE, they said, is part of the Amalgamations Group, a separate family business in which Mallika Srinivasan is a shareholder. Presenting her longstanding role there as proof of an equal split inside the Venu Srinivasan family, they said, is misleading. An executive familiar with Mallika’s position has described her as a custodian at TAFE, not a person who can speak for every shareholder in that group.

As a mother, to me both Lakshmi and Sudarshan are equal. My endeavour will be to ensure equity and a constructive dialogue.

Mallika Srinivasan, chairman and managing director, TAFE

Mallika Srinivasan also said management and ownership are distinct and should not be mixed. The joint statement put the same point in harder language: leadership jobs have been paid; economic ownership has not been recognised.

A 72-Hour U-Turn at Sundaram-Clayton

The succession argument left the living room in March 2026 and went onto a listed company’s board agenda.

On Friday, March 27, Sundaram-Clayton’s board accepted the resignation of company secretary P.D. Dev Kishan, citing personal reasons, and approved M. Muthulakshmi as his successor from April 6. Lakshmi Venu, the managing director, had raised a governance point: the company secretary was not a full-time employee of Sundaram-Clayton and had been on another group company’s rolls, reporting toward TVS Holdings’ finance function.

On Sunday night a fresh board meeting was called. On Monday, March 30, the board reversed itself. Kishan’s resignation was withdrawn. He stayed as company secretary and a key managerial person, without a break in service. R. Gopalan stepped down as chairman and stayed as a non-executive independent director. Venu Srinivasan, then chairman emeritus and managing director, was re-designated chairman and managing director with immediate effect. He had left that chair in 2022 as part of an earlier succession design, when Gopalan took it and Lakshmi Venu became managing director.

People around the company later said Kishan was made a full-time Sundaram-Clayton employee and that his grade was lifted to match a key managerial role. Promoters hold about 59 per cent of Sundaram-Clayton. The rest of that register watched a family argument rewrite a compliance appointment in a weekend.

Mutual Funds Already Own a Slice of the Fight

TVS Motor’s free float is not a family drawing room. As of June 2026, foreign institutions held 20.45 per cent, domestic institutions 21.13 per cent, and other public holders 8.12 per cent. ICICI Mutual Fund alone held 6.81 per cent of TVS Motor. On TVS Holdings, the public slice is 25.55 per cent, with ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund among the larger names.

TVS MOTOR, JUNE 2026 REGISTER

• Promoter group: 50.27 per cent, almost all of it TVS Holdings at 50.26 per cent.
• Foreign institutions: 20.45 per cent.
• Domestic institutions: 21.13 per cent, including mutual funds at 16.29 per cent.
• Other public: 8.12 per cent.

Those holders did not sign the 2020 branch split, the 2024 brand memorandum, or the April 2025 trust papers. They own stock in companies whose voting control runs through a trust whose beneficiaries are now in dispute. Holdings’ own public shareholders, at 25.55 per cent, sit even closer to that argument, because VS Trust’s 66.55 per cent is on their register, not one layer down.

Venu Srinivasan has not treated this as an open claim on assets he no longer considers his to give.

The businesses and assets were mine, and I had the full liberty to deal with them as I deemed fit, keeping in mind the best interests of the family members as well as the businesses. I have always believed that the next generation should be given full ownership and control while they are young and have the energy and ideas to build their enterprises. It is with this intent that I carried out a separation between Lakshmi and Sudarshan.

Venu Srinivasan, chairman emeritus, TVS Motor Company

Mallika Srinivasan and Lakshmi Venu answered that claim directly. The idea that all family assets belong to one person who may hand them out alone, they said, is neither agreed nor established. Arrangements made on one side, they said, cannot be called fair or consensual. They asked for a valuation, a negotiation, and a settlement that names economic interests, and said they still want that done through dialogue.

Sudarshan Venu, 37, already runs the motorcycle company and the holding company. Lakshmi Venu already runs the die-casting company and is vice chairman of TAFE. The jobs are not the question they have put on the table. The question is who benefits from VS Trust, and whether a brand-use pact and a set of management titles closed that question in 2024. Until a trust deed or a signed economic split is on the table, the public register still shows a 66.55 per cent block with a contested beneficial owner sitting on top of 50.26 per cent of TVS Motor.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a family ownership dispute involving listed companies. It is for information only and is not investment advice, legal advice, or a view on the merits of any claim any family member may bring. Readers who hold or may trade shares, or who have a legal interest in the companies named, should consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser and a qualified corporate lawyer before acting. Figures for prices, market values, share counts and beneficial-owner tables are taken from exchange filings and market closes cited in the piece and can change with later disclosures, board actions or court orders.