Steel City to beef up presence in TN

Visakhapatnam-based Steel City Securities Limited (SCSL), a leading stock broking company in the state, is planning to tap the Tamil Nadu market in a big way in order to increase its trading turnover.

The company currently enjoys a strong presence in Andhra Pradesh only. Of the SCSL's total 270 branches, about 92 per cent is located in AP. Tamil Nadu has just 3 branches while Karnataka and Orissa account for 5 and 12 branches respectively.

"At present our daily trading turnover is about Rs 250 crore. We want to increase this to Rs 350 crore soon and for this we are expanding mainly in Tamil Nadu, which has high potential in trading business," G Raja Gopal Reddy, executive director, SCSL, told Business Standard.

By March 2007, the company plans to set up 64 branches across Tamil Nadu.

"We have already identified the places. A majority of the branches will come under the franchise mode and we are expecting an additional trading turnover of Rs 100 crore per day by these new branches," he said.

To operate these new branches, SCSL would deposit more than Rs 5 crore in respective exchanges to.

Besides, SCSL would beef up its presence in Karnataka during the next fiscal. "We have decided to open another 25 branches across Karnataka in the next fiscal apart from one regional office at Bangalore," he said.

In Orissa, it is planning to open 14 more branches apart from the exiting 12 branches. The company earned a net profit of Rs 7.5 crore during the last fiscal.