| The Rs 600 crore ISO 9001 company has 19 branches across the country and most of them are in Karnataka. It sells 12,000 MT of steel tubes every month and serves about 10,000 customers. It has an inhouse laboratory and tube drawing and cutting facility as well. With a fleet of 20 trucks and 400 strong workforce, it has built a 3-lakh sq ft warehousing facility. |
| Apart from foraying into the retail market under the brand, 'Shankara Steel World', it has also drawn plans to enter the services sector. |
| Claiming that these two plans were maiden efforts by any steel tube company, Shankara Pipes Managing Director Sukumar Srinivas told Business Standard the company intends to open around 50 retail stores by 2008-09 and double that number by 2010-11 for an investment of around Rs 100 crore.. |
| "Over a period of five years, we intend to come out with three groups of stores "" regular (1000-1500 sq ft), express (5,000 sq ft) and super stores (10,000 sq ft). After Bangalore and 10 other major cities, we will focus on the Tier II cities," he said. |
| Srinivas sees a tremendous potential in the steel tube retail segment. The steel industry is witnessing a boom. User industries like construction, auto and infrastructure projects are fuelling the boom. |
| For instance, the industry is growing in the South and West India at 15 per cent compared to the all India average of 10 per cent. This accounts for 1.20 million tonnes out of the estimated all India 2.50 million tonnes of the steel tube sector, he says. |
| "The future looks very positive as infrastructure seems to be a key area of the Government spending. Textile industry is in the beginning of run away growth. Auto and construction industry continue to look very positive, as also machine building and light engineering. This explains the market potential," says Srinivas. |
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