Ahluwalia Contracts (India) Ltd (ACIL), the main contractor for the Commonwealth Games Village, plans to foray into the construction of power projects, said a top company official.
The company is already in talks with power companies, including Reliance Power, Indiabulls Power, Moser Baer and Vedanta, to build power projects. The power segment, the official said, is expected to become 10 per cent of the company’s order book by the end of next financial year. The average contract size would be in the range of Rs 500 crore.
The company has a order book of Rs 5,400 crore and expects to grow it by 30 per cent by the end of 2011, said Bikramjit Ahluwalia, chairman of ACIL.
“We expect large opportunities in affordable housing, health projects and urban infrastructure, including power. We are expecting to raise the share of urban infra to up to 35 per cent from 20 per cent and housing to have a share of 35 per cent in a year’s time.”
However, the company has increased its dependence on government projects to beat the slump in private development projects. Its share from government projects went up from 20 per cent in January 2009 to 32 per cent now.
The 15-year-old listed company competes with other contractors such as L&T, BL Kashyap and BE Billimoria. The company is developing housing projects for Everest Developers in Thane, Lotus 3C in NCR, Tata Housing in Bangalore and so on.
“Our overall plan is to become a Rs 5,000-crore company in the next five years, with compounded growth of 30 per cent very year,” said S K Sachdeva, executive director of Ahluwalia Contracts.
Sachdeva denied that the slowdown in commercial properties would have any impact on the company’s business as it is mainly building corporate offices of Reliance Communications, Bharti, Mudra Communications, Capero, among others.
The company is also into property development in joint ventures with local developers in Mumbai and Kota in Rajasthan, and plans to do more such JVs in the country.
