A company owned by the family of Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran is pursuing a ₹330-crore industrial park in Karnataka to serve automaker TVS Motor Co., marking its second such project involving the two-wheeler maker, whose chairman-emeritus Venu Srinivasan backed Chandrasekaran for a third term at the helm of Tata Sons.
Hanno seeks land for auto component facility
In November 2025, Hanno One Warehousing Pvt. Ltd, owned by Chandrasekaran’s wife Lalitha, and son Pranav, approached Karnataka’s Land Audit Committee for 35 acres in the state-run Immavu industrial area about 20km south of Mysuru. The meeting’s minutes describe the project as an ‘industrial park for auto component manufacturing and supply for TVS Motors and their tier-1 suppliers.’ Hanno’s latest financial statements show the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB), which buys and develops industrial land, has allotted it land for about ₹27 crore, of which it paid ₹7.91 crore in FY26.
Neither Chandrasekaran nor Srinivasan have informed the Tata Sons board about this business relationship. Tata Sons had earlier said the transactions did not need to be placed before its board. Srinivasan, a Tata Trusts nominee on Tata Sons board and a member of the nomination and remuneration committee that evaluates Chandrasekaran’s performance and pay, also did not inform Tata Sons or Tata Trusts, per an earlier statement from the philanthropic entities that own 65.9% of the Group’s holding firm.
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Hanno does not count as a related party of TVS Motor under Indian law, because Chandrasekaran is not a TVS director. That keeps the deals out of TVS’s related-party disclosures and leaves the duty to disclose with the two boards: Tata Sons and Tata Trusts.
The lack of disclosure has prompted corporate governance experts to question whether it is a conflict of interest and a breach of the Tata Code of Conduct. The Tata Code of Conduct says a conflict arises when an employee “can get an unfair benefit, for themselves, a family member, or someone close” by making or influencing decisions about a deal, and requires executive directors to disclose real or potential conflicts.
Srinivasan’s decisive vote on 17 September helped Chandrasekaran secure a third five-year term, starting February. Tata Trusts have disputed the vote, calling it a “legal nullity”.
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TVS links emerge in Hanno’s Tamil Nadu project
In June 2025, three months after Hanno was created, TVS leased about 17 acres of farmland to it in Uddanapalli, Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri district, near TVS’s Hosur plant, government records show. In November, HDFC Bank offered Hanno a ₹60 crore construction loan, secured by its lease rights and the building to be built there, as per a term sheet seen by Mint. The term sheet calls it the ‘TVS Motors Warehouse Project’, and estimates the cost of the 3.3 lakh sq. ft facility, due by March 2027, at ₹106.3 crore.
The Immavu site in Karnataka is about 10km from TVS’s Mysuru factory at Kadakola.
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Second project takes Hanno’s plans to ₹436 crore
Eighteen months after its creation, Hanno has two projects totalling ₹436 crore, each planned near a TVS plant in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
“The representative of the company appeared before the committee and highlighted the project proposal and requested allotment of 35.00 acres of KIADB land at Immavu Industrial area, Mysuru District,” read the minutes of Karnataka’s Land Audit Committee dated 6 November 2025. “He (representative of Hanno One) also informed that M/s. Hanno One Warehousing Pvt Ltd was incorporated in March 2025 in Mumbai. The company is in the process of establishing light manufacturing facility in 3,28,000 Sq.ft of land in Hosur, Tamil Nadu and entered into agreement with TVS Motor.”
Karnataka’s land audit panel that vets large land requests and often trims them, recommended the full 35 acres and sent the proposal to the State Level Single Window Clearance Committee for approval, with KIADB to allot land. Subsequently, KIADB allotted the land to Hanno, although Mint could not ascertain the date.
Hanno’s financial position at Karnataka land hearing
Karnataka’s Land Audit Committee minutes dated 6 November last year list Pranav’s net worth as ₹11.26 crore, about 3% of the project’s proposed ₹330 crore cost. At the time, Hanno had not yet completed a single building.
Mint could not establish whether TVS has agreed to use the Immavu park.
Emails sent to KIADB, TVS Motor and Hanno One seeking a comment went unanswered. Tata Sons and Trusts also did not reply.