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Indian mining billionaire Anil Agarwal is set to collect about $110 million after his flagship company, Vedanta Ltd., declared its first dividend since splitting into five separately listed businesses earlier this year.
On Thursday, Vedanta’s board approved an interim dividend of ₹5 per share, which will cost the company about ₹1,955 crore ($202 million). Agarwal’s promoter group owns 54.72% of Vedanta through London-based Vedanta Resources and related entities, so its share comes to roughly ₹1,070 crore ($110.6 million).
Shareholders on Vedanta’s register on Oct. 14 will receive the payout. The company said it will pay within the period required by Indian law.
The dividend is the first test of how much cash the slimmed-down Vedanta can return after one of the largest corporate breakups in Indian history. In June, Agarwal spun off the group’s aluminum, power, oil and gas, and iron and steel businesses into four new listed companies: Vedanta Aluminium Metal, Vedanta Power, Vedanta Oil and Gas, and Vedanta Iron and Steel. His promoter group kept majority control of each one.
What remains of Vedanta now leans heavily on Hindustan Zinc, the world’s second-largest integrated zinc producer, in which it owns 60.71%. As a result, future payouts are expected to rise and fall with zinc and silver prices.
That shift shows in the size of the first payout. Vedanta paid ₹34 per share across three interim dividends in the year ended March 2026, and ₹43.50 per share the year before.
The cash matters to Agarwal. Dividends from Vedanta have long been a main source of the money Vedanta Resources uses to service its debt, and the promoter group has encumbered more than half of the company’s shares under its bond covenants, according to recent stock exchange disclosures.
Vedanta’s operations are giving it room to pay. Consolidated net profit jumped 71.8% to ₹5,473 crore ($566 million) in the quarter ended June, as revenue from operations rose 53.6% to ₹24,205 crore ($2.5 billion). The company also reported record production for the September quarter, led by zinc, ferroalloys, ports and aluminum.
Investors gave the dividend a mixed welcome. Vedanta’s shares fell 2.75% to ₹254.15 on Thursday as metal stocks sold off across Mumbai, then rebounded 4.3% on Friday to close at ₹264. That values the company at about ₹1.03 lakh crore ($10.7 billion).
Agarwal, 72, began as a scrap metal trader in Patna, in eastern India, before building Vedanta Resources into a natural resources group with mines and smelters across India and Africa. Its African assets include Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia and zinc mines in South Africa. Forbes puts his net worth at $6.1 billion and ranks him 41st on its 2026 list of India’s richest people.
Vedanta has declared 50 dividends since July 2001.
All dollar figures are converted at the Oct. 9 rate of ₹96.71 to the dollar.
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