IVRCL Assets & Holdings Limited (IVRCL A&H), formerly IVR Prime Urban Developers, is targeting to have assets worth Rs 20,000 crore three years down the line. The company currently holds assets valued over Rs 7,500 crore.
Besides highways, the company will be bidding for build, operate and transfer (BOT) projects in power transmission, water, crude oil storage, parking lots, truck terminals, ports and coal mining, according to managing director S Ramachandran.
Ramachandran told Business Standard that IVRCL A&H also proposed to exit from the real estate business and transform itself purely into an infrastructure development company.
At present, IVRCL A&H has a land bank of 3,200 acres spread across Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Noida and Visakhapatnam worth about Rs 1,200 crore. The company had not started construction of any major real estate project as there had been a slowdown in the sector.
Hyderabad-based IVR Prime was renamed as IVRCL A&H with effect from March 31, 2001, following the amalgamation of IVR Strategic Resources & Services and IVRCL Water Infrastructures Limited with it.
After the amalgamation, the networth of IVR Prime has increased to about Rs 2,300 crore represented mainly by investments in BOT assets, which were formerly owned by its parent company IVRCL Infrastructures & Projects Limited. The higher networth was expected to enable the company to bid for larger projects.
Ramachandran said the company currently had five highway BOT projects on hand besides being the lowest bidder in two other projects. This apart, it has a desalination project, sewerage treatment, a truck terminal and a stake in a crude oil tankage project.
He said IVRCL A&H had a 37.5 per cent stake in the Rs 2,880-crore crude oil tankage project at Paradeep. The remaining 62.5 per cent shareholding was held by Indian Oil Tanking Limited. Financial closure for the project, to be executed over a period of 26 months, was achieved last month.
Now, the company is proposing to bid for the 1,585-km long natural gas pipeline project of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board. The project, estimated to cost about Rs 4,000 crore, involves laying of a gas pipeline from Mallavaram (near Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh) and Bhilwara in Rajasthan via Bhopal.
Ramachandran said the company was also pre-qualified for building two berths at Visakhapatnam port on a BOT basis and was looking towards laying a transmission line for the Power Finance Corporation and coal mining in the Mahanadi Coal Fields.
He said the proposed projects would be partly financed through selling the company's real estate assets and raising money through the qualified institutional placement route. The company recently sold two properties in Chennai and Pune for about Rs 63 crore
