ITI
Area of Operations: Telecom Equipment and Turnkey Services
Address: ITI Bhavan, Doorvaninagar, Bangalore - 560016
TEL: 080-25617518, 25614466, 
Fax: 080 25617525, 
Website: www.itiltd-india.com 

• Turnkey projects contributed Rs 1321 crore while manufacturing contributed
  Rs 480 crore
• Diversifying investments like wireless and broadband equipment manufacturing
• Plans to enter rural domain with telecom infrastructure

'Diversification and turnkey business are major steps'

You have achieved 30% growth since last year but your losses are still huge. How do you assess the situation?
We are on a revival path and though we have increased our sales over last three years, we are still in loss. For the FY 2005-06, we aimed at Rs 3,000 crore revenue, of which we have achieved only Rs 1,801 crore. The reason is that the window of the customer has shifted since last year. What was to be procured will be done in current fiscal. Tenders have been postponed and we had trouble with cash flow. The price of equipment is going down while the prices of raw materials such as steel, zinc, and copper have increased by over 40%, and this has affected our margins. We also have a huge task of maintaining townships, and a high salary budget of Rs 350 crore.

CMD YK Pandey

How do you plan to make ITI recover from its losses?
 We are more optimistic now. We already have a good booking order of around Rs 2,000 crore, lending a firm ground to our target of Rs 4,664 crore sales in the current fiscal. We have already cut down material cost to 71% of sales value, and financial expenses were reduced to 11% of sales.

Over 400 employees opted for voluntary retirement during the year. The company is tackling its surplus manpower by redeploying and retraining. We are also trying out various cash flow options, such as arranging funds from the customers, help from financial institutions, and working out different types of payments from suppliers. Some part of this is already in process and showing results. We are also manufacturing materials for internal use. For eg, the Rai Bareli plant fabricates GSM shelters, power plant and rooftop towers. Similarly, the Mankapur plant is doing much of the mechanical housings for BTS equipment. All this is in addition to the manufacturing for the regular orders of GSM.

What are the significant turnkey projects at hand?
ITI is making inroads in the new area of IP-based satellite broadband services. We have struck a strategic alliance with BSNL for building a VSAT based network in Ku band for broadband services, and the work is in progress. Equipment has been established, installation commissioning is over but BSNL is now in the process of getting subscribers.

We already have a GSM order in hand for almost 9 mn lines, and we are expecting more. The Mankapur plant has already produced 2,700 lines, since it began its operations in July 2005. While Rai Bareli has done 800 lines since it began operations in November. Our partner, Alcatel, has expressed satisfaction with the progress. Besides this, we are looking at a major initiative to set up infrastructure in the rural areas, as part of the government's plan to have 10 mn broadband lines by next year, and 20 mn by 2010.

Last year we commissioned a strategic broadband satellite network in Kolkata for the Indian Army. The coming August, we hope that the entire ASCON (army strategic communication network) project will be ready. This one-time project is worth Rs 370 crore and is a fine example of ITI's capability in setting up secure communication networks. It is a combination of various technologies and is very secure.