Quipo Infra to raise Rs 1,000cr

Quipo Infrastructure Equipment Ltd (QIEL) plans to raise Rs 1,000 crore through debt to fuel the expansion of its telecom rental business.

"We will add 6,000 telecom towers to expand our reach throughout the length and breath of the country," said Sunil Kanoria, chairman and managing director of QIEL told Business Standard.

QIEL is an infrastructure equipment rental company promoted by Kolkata-based infrastructure finance company Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd, with an asset base of over Rs 6,000 crore focused in infrastructure sector. QIEL has presence in four sector for equipment rental - construction, telecom, oil & gas and energy.

The company has separately floated a telecom rental company Quipo Telecom Infrastructure Pvt Ltd.

Kanoria further said, "The debt fund will be raise from domestic market and international market," Kanoria was in Ahmedabad on the occasion of company's energy rental arm "" Quipo Energy Rental setting up 'Centre of Excellence' that will offer gas based energy rental solution.

The fund raised will be to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore from banks and financial institutions from India and through External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) from Europe and Singapore.

Explaining the rationale behind its expansion plan, Kanoria informed that presently his company has been asked by GSM mobile company Bharti-AirTel to provide 10,000 telecom towers. However he says due to the dearth of manpower and resources, it will be difficult for the company to meet the requirement of AirTel.

After raising of the fund the company will be in a position to provide 6000 telecom towers out of the 10,000 towers requested. The telecom towers that are erected by QIEL's telecom rental arm will be on sharing business model. Under, the sharing business model, the ownership of telecom towers remains with QIEL while the towers are shared by several telecom service providers.

The first tenant of these 6,000 towers will be AirTel but it will be also shared by others in future, informs Kanoria. The company's telecom tower is present in states of Karnataka, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Bihar. The company will further spread its wings to the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The company has clients like AirTel, Idea amongst other. The company was also in talks with the GSM mobile service provider Hutch but the talks went into cold storage due to the recent changes at Hutch.

Recently, IDFC PE Fund II, a fund managed by IDFC PE and GIC Special Investments "" the private equity investment arm of the government of Singapore, had picked up 31% stake ( 15.5% each) in Quipo Infrastructure for Rs 150 crore.

SwedFund International AB holds12 percent in Quipo while among others 10 percent is with FMO, Netherlands and 15.5 percent by it parent company Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd.