Masrani Global Corporation (S/F)

MasraniLogoMasrani Global Corporation (NASDAQ: MSRN) is an India-based multinational conglomerate holding company with subsidiaries in telecommunications, computer technology, energy production, surveillance technology, biotechnology, and other fields. It was founded in 1973 by Sanjay Masrani with the establishment of Mascom Telecommunications Network; this was the company’s retroactive first subsidiary, and while Masrani Global itself technically did not exist until the second such subsidiary was founded, it is generally considered to have been born alongside Mascom. It has a website, available here, though it has not been updated since the events of 2015.

Between its NASDAQ debut in 2000 and its financial crisis in late 2015, Masrani Global was considered one of the leading Fortune 500 companies. Much of that success was credited to the progressive policies utilized by its second CEO, Simon Masrani (who held the position from 1992 until his death in December 2015). As of mid-2015, the company employed over 70,000 people and held 15 companies operating in 42 different countries. At that time it possessed over five hundred billion U.S. dollars’ worth of assets. From 2015 onward, however, it has slipped back due to years’ worth of financial quarters in the red. During Masrani’s time as CEO, the company was highly praised for its environmental policies and workers’ protections, but this has faded in more recent years.

History
1973-1992: Founding of Mascom Network

Masrani Global Corporation is retroactively considered to have begun in Mumbai, India on February 16, 1973 with the foundation of Mascom Telecommunications. It was founded by Sanjay Masrani. During its first ten years of operation, it worked on building and launching a satellite network; by 1979, it began incorporating fiber-optic communications. At the time, this was a very new technology (first used for telephone traffic in 1977), and utilizing this fresh innovation was a major benefit to Mascom.

By 1983, the company was ready to go live: it quickly established on the Asian market, streaming primarily to India and surrounding countries. Throughout the 1980s the network grew to offer a good number of channels; India had only one national channel at that time, which had been established in 1959. Mascom therefore had little competition, and with slightly over forty-five channels made available through its services, the company flourished.

Sanjay Masrani unexpectedly passed away in 1992, having headed the company as CEO for nineteen years. His son, the twenty-five-year-old Simon, inherited Mascom and became CEO.

1992-1997: Masrani goes global

The early 1990s were strong years for Mascom despite the sudden and unexpected change in leadership. Simon Masrani did his best to implement the policies that his father had used to make the company a success, pioneering any fresh new technologies available. Mascom soon offered cellular services right at the beginning of the cell phone age, once again establishing a foothold in a brand-new consumer industry.

With new services available, Mascom was no longer limited to the Indian subcontinent. It began operating in the Middle East and Eastern Asia; the company refers to this period of its history as “Dubai to Shanghai.” Its satellite fleet was utilized by both civilian and corporate interests. The number of channels grew from just over 45 to a total of 185, notably retaining all of the channels it had offered since its inception until at least 2015.

This expanded set of services led to expanded income, and Simon Masrani put this profit to work growing the company. In 1996, he founded Masrani Oil Industries, strategically choosing the port city of Abu Dhabi, UAE as its base of operations. This city was chosen for its shipping routes, merging the Indian and Arabian oil industries together. Not only this, the city’s location at the nexus of three continents enabled Masrani Oil to export petroleum to the Asian, African, and European markets; proximity to major seaways would later allow it access to the rest of the world via the global shipping system. To manage both Mascom and Masrani Oil, a holding company was created: Masrani Global Corporation.

By the end of 1996, the Masrani Global set of companies grew by one more. Data Analysys, founded in Johannesburg, South Africa, began operations that year. It provides advisory data solutions for audit and assurance reports, and this benefited Masrani Global’s preexisting subsidiaries as well as its corporate partners and customers.

1997-2015: Jurassic World

On May 21, 1997, Simon Masrani’s attention was drawn to International Genetic Technologies, a company founded by his father’s friend John Hammond not long after Mascom. Hammond had acted as Simon Masrani’s father figure after Sanjay’s death, but now InGen was struggling; a major disaster had struck it in 1993, bringing it close to Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Due to these struggles and numerous lawsuits aimed at InGen due to the events of 1993, Hammond had been fired and would be succeeded by InGen’s Chairman Peter Ludlow shortly; this decision was reached in late 1996. It is not known whether Masrani knew the exact nature of InGen’s crisis (the events involved the failure of a theme park located on Isla Nublar, Costa Rica called Jurassic Park, which would have exhibited de-extinct organisms from the Mesozoic era), but he did know of the research performed by Dr. Henry Wu. Having researched genetic hybridization for several years, Dr. Wu now revealed the results of his studies to the International Society of Geneticists: a genus and species of flowering plant created through hybridization. The ISG named it Karacosis wutansis in its creator’s honor. Masrani was duly impressed by this accomplishment and sought to add InGen under the Masrani Global umbrella.

Whether Masrani knew about Jurassic Park from Hammond before 1997 is unknown, but the world at large learned about its existence that year. Ludlow, after assuming the position of CEO, set in motion a plan to retrieve biological assets from the company’s Site B facility on Isla Sorna; the plan was sabotaged, resulting in a male Tyrannosaurus rex accidentally being released into San Diego, California near the original Jurassic Park facility‘s location. Ludlow had intended to repurpose the abandoned facility to open a smaller-scale but more accessible version of the park, but this was brought to a halt not only because of the bad publicity but because Ludlow died while attempting to recover the situation.

InGen’s future was now up in the air. The United States government, with Hammond’s help, imposed the Gene Guard Act to establish harsh regulations on genetic engineering and biotechnology related to de-extinction as well as mandate InGen provide for the organisms it had already created. Access to Isla Sorna and Isla Nublar was heavily restricted by the governments of relevant countries as well as the United Nations. Hammond died at the end of 1997; according to Simon Masrani, it was Hammond’s dying wish for Masrani to take the helm of InGen. A bidding war commenced, the main contenders being Masrani Global and Tatsuo Technology. Ultimately, Masrani Global won the bidding war and obtained all of InGen’s assets, including Dr. Wu and his knowledge.

Before 1998 was completed, some members of Masrani Global (mostly the newly-acquired InGen staff, likely including Dr. Wu) illegally performed research on Isla Sorna. This began about one hundred days after the merger, and resulted in new data and materials related to de-extinction which were planned for Jurassic Park’s reincarnation. It is not currently known if Simon Masrani was aware of the illegal research being conducted, although it is known that operatives from BioSyn Genetics infiltrated Site B through their Project Regenesis. The operation was abandoned in 1999 about nine months after it began due to fears of government discovery, but not before valuable new research had been concluded. At all levels throughout the company, conceptual planning for the new park had begun, drawing experts around from every Masrani Global subsidiary.

1998 also saw the expansion of Masrani Oil. It conducted its first wind power trials that year, demonstrating that the technology was effective and affordable. From there, it began establishing wind turbines around the world, and started research into other sustainable energy technologies such as solar power and hydroelectric power. Petroleum products remained a major source of income for the company.

In 1999, Masrani Global was granted limited access to Isla Sorna by the United Nations, and Simon Masrani visited the island himself. There he witnessed dinosaurs including a newly-hatched Parasaurolophus; this invigorated him with regards to the park project, and efforts were increased. By October, he had come up with a new name. Jurassic Park was too small for his vision, and sounded like the 1990s. Wanting to move the brand into the future, he rechristened it Jurassic World.

The turn of the millennium came, and Masrani Global flourished. In 2000, another Masrani subsidiary was founded in Abu Dhabi, this one Axis Boulder Engineering. December saw Dr. Wu promoted within InGen, officially becoming a part of the Jurassic World project. By 2001, stock in Masrani Oil had increased tenfold. An incident also occurred that year, threatening to expose InGen’s violation of the Gene Guard Act; a group of civilians intruded onto Isla Sorna and was rescued by the United States Armed Forces. What they had seen could have inadvertently revealed InGen’s crimes, and so currently-unnamed Masrani Global representatives bribed key government officials to alter the survivors’ testimonies and bury unwanted details. During the incident, a small group of Pteranodons had been released from a holding facility on the island, making their way to Victoria, British Colombia. The Canadian government hired American security contractor Vic Hoskins to subdue the reptiles, which he did with such efficiency that Simon Masrani expressed interest in hiring him. Hoskins became the new head of InGen Security Division, beginning the extensive process of updating the division for the modern age.

Masrani Global was one of the first companies to utilize wide-scale viral marketing advertisement in 2002. A worldwide campaign, not originally naming Masrani Global as the entity behind it, was used to advertise Jurassic World to the public in a series of small puzzles sent to potential customers. When the puzzle was solved by one of the recipients, Simon Masrani stunned the world by announcing Jurassic World in a television interview. He established a new company based in San José, Costa Rica called Timack Construction for the explicit purpose of building Jurassic World, landing an InGen Security team on the island that April to collect and contain animal assets. Once these animals were safely held where they could not harm construction workers, Timack and Axis Boulder employees were contracted and sent to the island to begin building. The construction materials cost U.S. $1.2 billion (nearly $1.8 billion in 2021).

A few years into the new millennium Masrani Global had the final success it needed to complete Jurassic World. In 2003, the same year the company founded Medixal Health in New York, a supposed Masrani Global representative was able to convince the U.S. House Committee on Science to roll back some of the Gene Guard Act’s regulations, specifically those restricting the genetic engineering and cloning of new species. It was argued that this would benefit humans and other animals by allowing for new medical treatments to be researched. The unnamed representative, however, never actually worked for Masrani Global; in a bizarre conspiratorial turn of events, a BioSyn employee was responsible for proposing the rollback in the name of Masrani Global. The movement passed, and these restrictions were lifted; however, key members of the Committee were bribed by the Masrani Global representatives to arrive at this decision. Nonetheless, it permitted InGen to begin development of new gene splicing techniques and resume study of de-extinction legally. Jurassic World was well underway.

Working on the park was not without its issues, some of them severe. Along with the challenges Dr. Wu and his staff faced in creating new life forms through genetic engineering, health and safety issues sometimes occurred. Beginning in the winter of 2003, an internship program on the island was begun in secret, bringing limited numbers of college students to the island as prospective future employees. Some of the dinosaurs, which had been temporarily shipped to Isla Sorna for safekeeping, showed health problems upon returning, and all of Isla Sorna was experiencing an ecological crisis. In March 2004, a severe storm struck Isla Nublar, forcing a brief evacuation; one of the interns died in a vehicular accident on the way to the dock, which Masrani Global covered up through payoffs to the family. The interns were dismissed with cover stories and nondisclosure agreements, and the program was renamed Bright Minds and restarted that summer. Simon Masrani hand-picked each of the attendees, which included Jurassic World’s future Operations Manager, Claire Dearing. During the Bright Minds internship, a few animal welfare issues in the park were resolved, including the formerly undiagnosed health issues, but an incident of corporate espionage from Masrani Global’s rival Mosby Health resulted in the death of another intern. By now, Masrani had added clauses for this kind of situation into the agreements to prevent their insurance policy on Isla Nublar from being revoked. The incident was again kept away from the public eye, this time without any under-the-table payoffs.

Isla Sorna was, according to official records, emptied of de-extinct life by the time the park opened. While the illegal cloning that had destabilized its ecology was still kept secret, other hypotheses to explain the trophic collapse were proposed, and ultimately the decision to relocate the dinosaurs to Isla Nublar was framed as an animal rights triumph. The fact that it allowed InGen to easily stock Jurassic World for visitors was merely a convenience. Isla Sorna was kept restricted and heavily guarded by a multinational coalition including InGen Security and the United Nations, and poachers continued to try and land on the island; what has happened there since 2004 is currently confidential.

Jurassic World opened without further issue on May 30, 2005 as originally scheduled. Within its first month of operations, it was visited by 98,120 visitors and received mostly glowing reviews. Masrani Global had signed an agreement with the Costa Rican Environmental Protection Society prior to opening day, ensuring that Isla Nublar’s native ecosystem would remain partly intact; it also enabled the return of the Tun-Si tribe to the island after they were displaced and impoverished by InGen during the 1980s. These gestures of goodwill cultivated a philanthropic image for not only Masrani Global’s popular CEO, but for the company as a whole. InGen was even trusted, despite the 1997 incidents and its mysterious past, thanks to this good publicity.

While InGen rapidly became the company’s most talked-about subsidiary due to Jurassic World, other Masrani Global companies saw great advancements too. By 2007, Mascom had completed and launched the Centaurus satellite array, a system of GPS satellites which were updated over the next decade or so to constantly improve their service. Also in 2007, the company founded Aerospace Dynamix in Toulouse, France. Working with Axis Boulder and Mascom, this company was able to expand Masrani Global’s use of drone technology. InGen Security had by now grown too, becoming much more than the private security firm it had started as. Under Hoskins’s guidance, it now offered contingency and peacekeeping services to governments and companies the world over. Other Masrani subsidiaries, such as Aerospace Dynamix and Mascom Network, allowed it to expand the technologies it used for security purposes.

Ironically, Jurassic World quickly became one of Masrani Global’s biggest financial drains despite being the company’s flagship theme park. The island’s dinosaur population continuously grew, and new attractions were perpetually in development by Timack and Axis Boulder. Despite the park’s immense popularity, its revenue stagnated by the late 2000s, and on April 4, 2008 a board meeting was held with Masrani and Dearing in attendance. The Board had concluded that, since attendance spiked every time a new species was introduced, genetic engineering of a brand-new form of animal would create an attendance spike large enough to offset the park’s operating costs for a few years. Masrani agreed, and requested that Dearing give Dr. Wu the authorization to do this. She complied, and Wu began working with the InGen genetics staff to create such a creature. A result was produced in 2009, and while Masrani was originally impressed, the animal quickly proved unsuitable for park exhibition and Wu was ordered to start over.

While Wu labored, Masrani Global forged new connections. In the early 2010s, it formed a partnership between Jurassic World and the Lockwood Foundation, which was run by John Hammond’s former business partner Sir Benjamin Lockwood. They had parted ways due to irreconcilable differences in morality during the 1990s, but Lockwood’s memory of Hammond had softened in the years after the latter’s death and he now wanted to be involved again. His foundation was a boon to the park, especially considering its growing financial hardships. Dearing was involved with this process, with the Lockwood Foundation’s representative being its manager Eli Mills. Masrani Global also acquired a new subsidiary in 2011; it bought Tatsuo Technology, its former competitor. Masrani’s computational abilities were greatly enhanced by Tatsuo assets. Mascom released its popular smartphone, the Tanius 6J, in 2012; despite its promising sales it fell short of dominating the market. Rivals such as Samsung and Apple were still more widespread, leaving Mascom as an alternative to these bigger brands.

Mills and Hoskins became acquainted, and they formulated a plan to use InGen technology to bolster the company’s profits. Hoskins arranged with Wu to alter the goals of his bioengineering project. While Simon Masrani remained under the impression that Wu was still making a new park asset, Hoskins convinced Wu that he could obtain better funding from selling to the United States government. Bioweapons regulations are extremely murky due to the speed the technology advances at, which often outpaces the evolution of law; Hoskins and Mills agreed that engineering a macroscopic animal for war would be profitable and tolerated by the government. Mills would provide funding from the Lockwood Foundation’s coffers, and Wu would be able to continue his research as he pleased. Dearing, busy with various park matters such as corporate partnerships, was left unaware of this covert agreement. Like Masrani, she was under the impression that Wu was working on a park attraction. The result, named Indominus rex, hatched in 2012. Masrani was unable to come see it, but was thrilled to hear that Wu had been successful.

Masrani Oil flourished, being commissioned in 2013 to build an offshore wind turbine facility called the Cerberus Array off the coast of the United Kingdom. This array includes 120 turbines, which as of 2013 generated 450 megawatts of electricity. The following year, they began research into improving the architecture of three-bladed turbines, being commissioned to build more offshore wind farms near Australia, the Philippines, and South Africa; this was a US $48 million project, which Aerospace Dynamix collaborated with Masrani Oil on. The completion date was scheduled for 2016; it is currently unknown if they met this goal. A setback hit the company in August, when a powerful hurricane in the East Pacific Ocean severely damaged Masrani Oil’s drilling platform L-12; damages amounted to $12.5 million, including three of the legs buckling and the derrick detaching completely. Internal damage threatened the lives of the rig crew, but no deaths were reported. Repairs began in October, replacing the six original mooring lines with twelve which were rated to be 50% stronger. Within five years, L-12 would be replaced by a semi-submersible platform. InGen finalized the Martel facility in Siberia that year in November, drilling for woolly mammoth remains in the permafrost.

The result of Masrani Oil and Aerospace Dynamix’s wind turbine project was revealed at InventiCon 2014 in the form of the XL25 turbine model. It garnered enough attention to fund the project into Phase II. Mascom decommissioned the weather satellite Glinda that year as well, replacing it with the longer-lived Ervic satellite. Collaboration with Chinese universities would soon further research into solar power technology as well, which Simon Masrani helped oversee. He was kept quite busy with all these developments and had been unable to see Jurassic World’s Indominus rex yet; he was booked for the next six months at least, planning to see it that summer. In reality, he would not be able to make it until December 2015, mere weeks before the animal was supposed to be put on display. Its debut date had been pushed back due to behavioral problems exhibited by the specimen.

That is not to say Masrani ignored InGen; he had been invested in research being performed by the company for over a decade now and that was not letting up. Isla Nublar’s North Mount Sibo Genetics Centre had produced promising results in sequencing the Velociraptor genome; by now, InGen was in possession of the world’s most comprehensive genetic database. This had helped better manage Jurassic World, and InGen Security’s I.B.R.I.S. project which began in 2012 promised to finally integrate the problematic raptors into the park. Masrani announced a $225-million funding boost to InGen over the next three years, most of which would go to Security. At the same time, he announced the Indominus to a limited audience on his corporate blog; most of the general public only knew that Jurassic World would soon be exhibiting a brand-new theropod. Although the animal’s true nature would not be revealed until its debut, ticket sales skyrocketed as the Board had predicted.

Masrani Global had a bigger presence at InventiCon 2015, with Simon Masrani himself making an appearance to reveal the company’s new holographic technologies. Most exciting among these was the Mascom Tanius 7, the world’s first mobile smartphone with built-in holographic functions. Masrani described to thrilled audiences the advancements in virtual reality he hoped to make in the near future. The Tanius 7 experienced a 30% increase in preorders compared to its predecessor the Tanius 6J, and for the first time, Mascom was no longer considered an “alternative” to bigger companies on the global market. It was now a legitimate competitor. Its twenty-nine satellites covered ninety-four percent of the globe by that time, making access to its network nearly universal. Masrani’s other companies were doing well for themselves too, with a notable interview of Dr. Wu describing how InGen could benefit Medixal Health through its research into ancient epidemics and the traces they left behind in DNA. A major peat deposit with organic matter dating back several million years had just been discovered by Masrani Oil, which InGen took advantage of as well. Another significant change came to Masrani Oil that April: it rebranded itself as Masrani Energy, reflecting its expansion into sources of energy beyond fossil fuels.

The grand reveal of the Indominus exhibit was still months away, having been delayed to January 2016, but Masrani had another way to increase guest counts at Jurassic World and drum up positive publicity. He and the park’s administrators drew up plans for a youth vacation camp they named Camp Cretaceous; when complete, it would have space for up to five hundred campers. They would be given behind-the-scenes tours of the park, seeing in person the science and engineering feats that made the park possible. A trial run was planned for December during the American winter holidays, with six campers attending. Five of them were chosen for their connections to Masrani Global or for publicity purposes; the sixth was chosen via lottery in the form of a video game.

Masrani Global was doing quite well in the stock market at this time. It had already been a member of the Fortune 500 and NASDAQ 100 for years; in 2013 it experienced a share price index increase of 14.87% between Q1 and Q4. By the end of 2014, its NASDAQ share price index was $182.45* 5.17 ⇑ 2.83%; for most of 2015 it was $183.02* 0.28 ⇑ 0.15%.

Simon Masrani was able to visit Isla Nublar again on December 22, 2015. At long last he saw the Indominus, being excited by its potential but wary of its intelligence and efforts to escape captivity. He had one of InGen Security’s respected animal trainers, Owen Grady, inspect the paddock for weak points; during this inspection the dinosaur was mistakenly thought to have escaped and Grady entered the paddock to look for clues. He did so without authorization from Claire Dearing, so when control room staff reported to Dearing that the animal had not left its paddock, Grady had already put himself and two other staff members in danger. While Grady escaped with his life, his actions led to the deaths of the other two staff members and the accidental release of the Indominus. A multi-hour effort to recapture it ensued, and as a result Simon Masrani inevitably learned that Dr. Wu had knowingly altered the dinosaur’s biology to make it harder to subdue. Masrani never learned about the role Hoskins had to play in this conspiracy, since Masrani took to the air in his personal helicopter to kill the Indominus with the help of InGen Security’s Asset Containment Unit. During the chase, the helicopter collided with the Jurassic World Aviary, panicking the enclosure’s inhabitants and releasing them onto the island. Havoc ensued, culminating with the closure and evacuation of Jurassic World. Masrani died in the helicopter crash, and Hoskins was killed later that night. Wu was evacuated by InGen Security separately from the rest of the staff members and effectively ended his career with InGen, sheltering with Mills at the Lockwood estate from the unavoidable government investigation.

2015-present: Ongoing financial crisis

The closure of Jurassic World, and the dramatically publicized animal attacks that led to it, dealt a heavy blow to Masrani Global. In the hours following the decision to abandon the island, COO Richard Wiesner sent urgent memos to the company’s employees and investors urging them to trust one another in order to pull through the crisis. Panicked calls from both parties had swamped the company’s lines. Wiesner appears to have taken over some of the CEO’s duties, but it is currently unknown who ultimately succeeded Simon Masrani.

Scores of visitor and staff injuries had been incurred during the incident, as well as numerous staff deaths during the effort to capture the Indominus. Park assets, including both technology and living organisms, had been destroyed as well, costing the company millions. Between the damage to company assets and the class-action lawsuit brought on by the injured and families of the deceased, Masrani Global’s stock value plunged. After the incident, its NASDAQ share price index was measured at $158.12* -3.36 ⇓ 2.08%. Quarter after quarter in the red plagued the company in what quickly became the worst financial crisis in its history.

At the center of this crisis was InGen, a subsidiary that had once held great promise. Now, with Wu missing, Hoskins dead, and both of them implicated in a disastrous conspiracy, InGen was no longer a beacon of scientific achievement in the public eye, but a symbol of hubris and greed. Masrani Global made every effort to distance itself from Jurassic World and InGen to help protect its public image, but this ended up harming the company’s image to some. Before the end of 2015, Claire Dearing spoke at a public testimonial regarding the incident, making an effort to redirect blame away from the animals and onto the real guilty party, Wu and Hoskins. Henry Wu was eventually stripped of his credentials during a trial for bioethical misconduct by the U.S. government in 2016. Violations of the Gene Guard Act were discovered, revealed by an anonymous hacktivist, and since these had occurred after InGen was bought by Masrani Global this threatened the holding company just as much as the subsidiary. As more and more of the truth came to light, some of Masrani Global’s board members resigned in disgrace; others came out as whistleblowers, while some were arrested.

In 2017, Dearing founded the Dinosaur Protection Group, an organization devoted to ensuring the rights of de-extinct animals in ways that the government had failed. Originally, the DPG attempted to persuade Masrani Global to take action and send paleoveterinarians to Isla Nublar and care for the abandoned animals, staging protests outside its corporate offices in the United States. However, the company’s new leadership was determined to remove de-extinction from Masrani’s image altogether, citing costs and the ongoing financial crisis as justification to take no action. However, it is suspected that the company’s real motivation was the hope that the animals would die off on their own; this was made far more possible when the island experienced severe volcanic activity later that year and into 2018.

Masrani Global Corporation’s future remains uncertain. The DPG has affected its faltering public image by accusing it of animal rights failures that run contrary to the late Simon Masrani’s values, even starting the social media hashtag #MakeMasraniExtinct in 2018. Despite the company and multiple nations’ governments opposing a rescue operation to Isla Nublar, one was illegally carried out that June, resulting in de-extinct life being brought into the black market and otherwise released into the Pacific Northwest. This has made it impossible for de-extinction to simply fade into obscurity as a one-time cultural and scientific phenomenon; it is now a firmly entrenched part of modern life. Even before this incident occurred, Masrani Global was rumored to be considering cutting ties with InGen. Time will tell what manner of relationship these companies will have going forward, and whether Masrani Global is able to financially right itself.

Divisions

As a holding company, most of Masrani Global’s divisions actually lie within its subsidiaries. It is headed by several corporate positions, including the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and others; there is also a Board of Directors, which is probably made up of the directors of its holdings. The position of CEO was held by Sanjay Masrani from the company’s founding on February 16, 1973 until his death in 1992, and then by his son Simon Masrani until his death on December 22, 2015. It is not known who assumed the position following his death. The position of COO is currently held by Richard Wiesner, and has been since at least 2014.

Holdings
Mascom Telecommunications Network

This is the oldest of the Masrani Global companies, founded in Mumbai in 1973 by the corporation’s founding CEO Sanjay Masrani. Among one of the first wireless networks to utilize fiber-optic communication, Mascom first went on the air in 1983 and expanded over the next decade into one of South Asia’s biggest satellite providers by 1991. Under the guidance of the corporation’s second CEO Simon Masrani, it became a global enterprise, with twenty-nine satellites covering 94% of the world and offering 185 different channels by 2014. At that point in time, it still offered all of the channels it did when it was founded. Today it is known for the Tanius series of mobile smartphones, with the 2015 Tanius 7 being the first such phone to offer holographic technology. Mascom cellular and satellite service is available in 31 countries, and offers other services to the public such as GPS navigation and near-instantaneous access to weather reporting. It also offers surveillance services to government entities, including real-time tracking and Mascom-HD technology.

This is one of the most integral holdings of Masrani Global, using its satellite network to facilitate communications between the other companies. It frequently collaborates with them on technology projects; its navigation and communication systems are utilized in drones built by InGen Security and Aerospace Dynamix, for example, and its satellites now use computer chips designed by Tatsuo Technology.

Masrani Energy Industries

Originally Masrani Oil, this is the second-oldest company under the Masrani Global umbrella and the first to be incorporated, alongside Mascom, into Masrani Global Corporation. It was founded in Abu Dhabi in 1996, four years after Simon Masrani first took the helm of the company. Since then it grew to merge the Arabian and Indian oil industries and establish itself as one of the most competitive companies on the market despite being so young, its stock increasing tenfold in five years. Within a decade, it began drilling for natural gas as well as crude oil, and now is invested in renewable energy research; it has a presence in the wind, solar, and hydroelectric power industries and has contributed to technological development in each. Its largest asset is still crude oil, which constituted US $122.4 billion of its total $171.2 billion in assets as of 2014. At that point in time, it fueled approximately 21% of the world’s transportation sector including automobiles and trucks, trains, and airplanes. The plan as of 2015 was for the company to average $125 billion in investments per year through 2030, and to cooperate with its competitors to further the growth of renewable energy sources. It has been the most profitable Masrani Global company by a considerable margin.

The revenues of Masrani Energy are a great asset to its sister companies, and it collaborates with the other Masrani Global holdings in a variety of ways. In addition to fueling the transport of Masrani goods and powering Masrani facilities, it has negotiated with InGen Genetics for the utilization of organic matter recovered from ancient peat deposits, and worked with Axis Boulder to develop improved water turbines for hydroelectric power generation. Similarly, it invested $48 million into three-bladed wind turbine architecture research in 2014 as part of a project in which it worked with Aerospace Dynamix.

Data Analysys

Founded in the same year as Masrani Oil Industries, the Johannesburg-based Data Analysys is one of the lesser-known Masrani companies but still one of which the corporation is quite proud. It provides advisory data solutions for audit and assurance reports. Services are available for large-scale and small-scale operations, so it has a wide customer base.

Computing and finance management are vitally important parts of running Masrani Global Corporation, and for these services the holdings most likely all rely on Data Analysys.

International Genetic Technologies Corporation, Inc.

After the presentation of the genetically-engineered Karacosis wutansis to the International Society of Geneticists in May 1997, Simon Masrani began looking into acquiring San Diego-based International Genetic Technologies and eventually succeeded the following year. This acquisition was personal to him, as InGen’s former CEO John Hammond had acted as Simon Masrani’s father figure following Sanjay Masrani’s death. At the time of the merger, InGen was deeply embroiled in the de-extinction controversy and was considered a lost cause, but under the Masrani Global umbrella it was rebuilt into a flourishing industrial competitor. Through InGen, Masrani was able to build its flagship theme park Jurassic World, and the Security Division was grown into an internationally-recognized company offering contingency and peacekeeping services to governments and private enterprises. As of the 2014 fiscal year, InGen’s assets amounted to US $143.15 billion, with laboratory assets being by far the largest investment valued at $84.5 billion. However, InGen’s genetic engineering practices have ensured that it remains the most controversial of Masrani Global’s holdings, and Jurassic World was its biggest financial drain. The closure of Jurassic World due to a serious breach of safety procedures in 2015, along with the simultaneous death of Simon Masrani, caused the largest financial crisis in Masrani Global’s history. Its future with InGen is now uncertain.

Prior to the scandals of 2015, InGen was a major collaborator with other Masrani Global holdings. Masrani Energy proved a valuable source of genetic material from its drilling operations, and genetic research was used to benefit Medixal Health in disease research. InGen was the reason for Timack Construction’s founding, as that company was originally created to build Jurassic World. Technology in the park was partly engineered by Axis Boulder and Tatsuo Technology. InGen Security often worked with Aerospace Dynamix on drone technology and with Mascom on satellite surveillance, such as its revolutionary research into cold-signature mapping procedures.

Axis Boulder Engineering

This subsidiary was established by Masrani Global in Dubai in 2000 to oversee its mechanical engineering projects, and is now used for both operations within the company and public civil engineering pursuits. Axis Boulder is one of the lesser-known holdings but is heavily involved in many of Masrani Global’s ventures, particularly those that require the large-scale production and assembly of technology such as vehicles and large facilities.

Aside from the services it offers to local, national, and corporate entities, Axis Boulder’s primary purpose is assisting other Masrani Global subsidiaries in the creation and assembly of technological assets. It was a major part of Jurassic World, with Axis Boulder designers and mechanical engineers being behind many of the park’s attractions. Machines built by Aerospace Dynamix and Mascom often carry Axis Boulder parts, and are frequently equipped with Tatsuo computer chips. Axis Boulder is also involved with building Masrani Energy power plants; it frequently collaborates with Timack Construction when building facilities for the other subsidiaries.

Timack Construction

Originally founded in San José in 2002 for the explicit purpose of building Jurassic World, Timack Construction has been a highly valued Masrani company for many years despite not being one of the most prominent subsidiaries. Although it was the driving force behind Jurassic World construction between April 2002 and December 2015, it also came to provide its services to other companies and public projects. It specializes in commercial building construction. Since the closure of Jurassic World, it has been able to survive by providing excellent quality in its work and has established itself as a successful venture with or without the park it was originally created for.

While this is not one of the biggest Masrani holdings, it is very useful to its sister companies as it provides world-renowned construction services which are essential for planning and building the other companies’ facilities. It also works with Axis Boulder Engineering on a regular basis whenever facilities require extensive mechanical parts, which is a common occurrence for most Masrani Global subsidiaries.

Medixal Health

The source of the Masrani Healthcare Network was established in 2003 in New York, where it is headquartered. Medixal Health was envisioned as a research hospital system from the start and had constructed over 32 facilities throughout the United States by 2014. At the time it was created, InGen was rapidly growing and the United States government was reducing restrictions on genetic research, which allowed Medixal Health to begin extensive study into human and animal health on the genetic scale. Some of its more noteworthy research includes the study of retroviral genes in the human genome, tracing these back to ancient and even prehistoric epidemics. This has allowed it to study the future of disease and predict coming health trends. Medixal Health is most likely the entity behind the Masrani Healthcare Network, which provides health insurance and care to all Masrani Global employees.

It is not one of the “big three” Masrani companies (Mascom, Energy, and InGen), but provides healthcare to all Masrani Global employees through the Masrani Healthcare Network. By using cutting-edge genetic research, which was greatly aided by InGen scientists up until the events of 2015, this company has been able to provide Masrani employees with top-of-the-line healthcare at an affordable price. Because of Medixal Health, Masrani Global is one of the healthiest companies to work for.

Aerospace Dynamix

One of Masrani’s newest companies, founded in Toulouse in 2007, Aerospace Dynamix has been involved with innovation in the aeronautics industry. Its main focus is on the design and production of wing technology, increasing the efficiency of air travel. Along with improvements to commercial and governmental aircraft, it has developed drone technology for the private and public sectors since its inception. Vehicles constitute the bulk of its work, but it also builds and improves more stationary air technologies, namely wind turbines. With US $48 million invested in blade architecture in 2014, Aerospace Dynamix was able to construct prototypes that attracted enough investors to push the project forward.

As one of the notable Masrani technological engineering subsidiaries, Aerospace Dynamix works very often with Axis Boulder Engineering to manufacture its machines and improve their design. Mascom technology aids its drones and other aircraft in navigation and communication; it is likely that Aerospace Dynamix vehicles can help put Mascom satellites into orbit as well. Perhaps more surprisingly, Aerospace Dynamix was a common partner of InGen prior to the Jurassic World scandals in 2015; in particular, it worked with InGen Security on drone engineering. Surveillance drone operation was one of InGen Security’s most prominent services, and Aerospace Dynamix was largely responsible for the creation of those InGen drones.

Tatsuo Technology

As of 2015, this was the most recent Masrani acquisition, being puchased and merged under the Masrani umbrella in 2011. Prior to that, the Tokyo-based Tatsuo Technology was actually a major rival to Masrani Global; it competed in a bidding war for InGen acquisition in 1998. Over the years, Masrani Global grew to be a much larger company (its head start of nearly a decade likely helped) and entered into negotiations to make Tatsuo a subsidiary. This holding is chiefly known for chip-set design and manufacturing. Since its acquisition, Masrani Global has had it focused on developing next-generation computer processors, which have already yielded significant advances in computing power.

Computer chips created by Tatsuo are a common feature in most Masrani technologies, so since 2011 this holding has been an important asset to the bigger Masrani companies. One notable example is the development of the Hammond XB-20 gene sequencer, which was invented for use in Jurassic World due to a collaboration between Tatsuo and InGen. This device allowed geneticists to decode DNA samples faster than ever, identifying and sequencing genomes in under an hour in some cases. Tatsuo chips made this efficiency possible; they are probably incorporated wherever Masrani Global has a demand for processing power.

Other holdings

Along with these companies, Masrani Global Corporation includes several others which are less known. As of the 2014 fiscal year, it held a total of fifteen companies in various business sectors around the world. Because these companies are less publicized by the corporation, they are not as recognized as Masrani brands; as of 2004 some investigating had to be done for the average person to discover these companies’ ties to Masrani Global, meaning the corporation could use these as shell companies for its various ventures. In the internet age, this is not as easy, since anyone can trace the links between corporate entities and share the information.