Sujana Tower eyes Rs 650-700cr topline from Guwahati unit

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Kamesh Yalamarty, MD, Sujana Tower spoke about the company's expansion and fund raising plans.

Hyderabad-based Sujana Tower is planning to set up a tower manufacturing facility at Guwahati in Assam. 

"We are looking for an investment of about Rs 300 crore in this project. We are hopeful that we should be able to ground this project in the next 12-15 months," he said.

"The Assam project has one lakh tonnes installed capacity and will give us a topline of Rs 650-700 crore going under current market price," he added.

The company is looking at a very conservative debt-equity ratio. He said that, the debt component wil be very low at about 33-34%, and the balance would be funded from the internal accruals.

Below is the vernatim transcript of Yalamarty's interview with Gautam Broker and Sonia Shenoy of CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: Could you tell us about your plans for the new tower facility and what kind of investments you are looking to make in that facility going forward?

A: Sujana is planning to consolidate on its superior position as of date. We want to have a very large footprint either in the domestic markets or in the global markets. So, in order to achieve the first runner advantage and supremacy in the North East area, which is having very great priority on the power for the country; we are planning to establish a unit there with an initial capacity of about one lakh metric tonnes.

This would be an integrated plant where we would be manufacturing our own sections till the finished product like telecommunication towers, transmission towers and technological structures so on and so forth. As the ballpark figures go, we are looking for an investment of about Rs 300 crore in this project. We are hopeful that we should be able to ground this project in the next 12-15 months.

This project is going to give us foothold in the North East area apart from targeting certain areas in West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Nepal and Bhutan. This is going to be a regional one and this is part of two- three facilities, we are looking all over the region

Q: Could you tell us more about how you plan to fund this project, this Rs 300 crore, how much of it will be debt, how much of it will be equity? Could you give us some numbers on what kind of business potential you are expecting to see and in which financial year?

A: We are looking at a very conservative debt-equity ratio. As things stand today even though we have not finalized, the debt component is going to be very low at about 33-34%, and we want to fund the balance from the internal accruals.

We are on a strong wicket as far as the internal accruals are concerned and we would like to leverage it. Traditionally, Sujana Towers debt gearing is very less. Even today we don