BEL looks beyond govt for EVM biz

Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) is looking beyond the Election Commission of India for expanding the market for its electronic voting machines (EVMs).

The company, which has pioneered the manufacture of EVMs in India, presently supplies 50 per cent of the requirements of Election Commission whenever they come out with an order.

The strategic business unit for export manufacturing of BEL is presently exploring opportunities both in India and abroad for EVMs. It recently supplied 18,000 EVMs to the Gujarat government, 2,000 units to the Tamil Nadu government for municipal and local body elections.

Apart from the Central government and state government bodies, the company is now in the process of supplying EVMs to the corporate sector, a company official said.

The average cost of an electronic voting machine made by BEL is about Rs 10,000. Apart from BEL, the Hyderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) also manufactures EVMs in the country.

For the current year, the Election Commission has placed an order for producing 78,000 units with the ECIL. Whereas, BEL will supply 102,000 units this year.

“We need to take permission from the election commission to supply to the corporate sector. We are exploring the option presently,” he said.

He said BEL is also expecting another order from Gujarat for their local body elections. In order to meet the growing requirements from various government bodies, the company recently modernised its mass manufacturing facility for EVMs at an investment of Rs 8 crore in Bangalore.

The SBU, which derives nearly 80 per cent of its business from the sale of EVMs is now all set to tap the growing segment of contract manufacturing from the global companies. The unit is presently in talks with several companies in the US and UK for providing RFID-based (Radio Frequency Identification) solutions.

“We have held preliminary discussions with a few companies in this connection and we are yet to firm up any order,” the official said. BEL hopes to finalise the deal in the next six months, he added.

The company has already signed MoUs with some foreign companies who are very active in avionics like Boeing, Northrop Grummen and Lockheed Martin and some Israeli companies. BEL expects to bag some orders from these companies by end of the present financial year.

“These companies have already come and audited our quality, manufacturing, business process systems and certified us as their vendors for their requirements. With this type of upgradation of our infrastructure, we are confident that by this financial year end we will get quite a few good orders as part of the offset business,” BEL chairman and managing director, V V R Sastry told Business Standard.

BEL is likely to end the present financial year with an order book position of Rs 10,000 crore. As of April 2008, it had an order book of Rs 9,000 crore and expects to get more orders during the course of the year. It is targetting a turnover of Rs 4,800 crore this year, a growth of around 18 per cent over last fiscal.