Gayatri Infra Ventures to raise Rs 1,500 cr debt

Gayatri Infra Ventures, a subsidiary of the city-based Gayatri Projects, is planning to raise around Rs 1,500 crore debt to fund a road project in Andhra Pradesh.

"The funds (Rs 1,500 crore) will be raised for development of Hyderabad-Karimnagar-Ramagundam road project worth Rs 2,200 crore, to be taken up under BOT (Build, Operate and Transfer) mode," said Sandeep Reddy Managing Director Gayatri Projects.

"We have appointed IL&FS as a syndicating agency. They are in the process of raising debt for us. Number of banks are also coming forward to finance the project. We may achieve the financial closure by December," Reddy told PTI.

According to a senior official of the company Rs 230 crore will be the equity in the project and Rs 450 crore will come as a grant from the Andhra Pradesh Road Development Corporation.

The company is also mulling to go for an IPO next year.

"We want to achieve Rs 7,000-8,000 crore worth of assets before going for the listing (of Gayatri Infra Ventures). Today, we have an asset base of 5,000 crore. We are targeting end 2011 or early 2012 for the road subsidiary IPO," he said.

The net worth of road subsidiary is nearly Rs 250 crore at present and the company plans to raise about Rs 300-400 crore through the IPO.

Reddy said the company is having seven BOT projects out of which about five will be completed this year.

He said the company is in the process of transforming from a pure contracting EPC venture to infrastructure developer-cum EPC. Gayatri Projects has two subsidiaries. While Gayatri Ventures is into infrastructure related projects Gayatri Energy Ventures is into power generation.

Reddy said presently they have about Rs 4,000 crores worth of irrigation projects on hand and some of the projects in AP are going slow due to the shortage of funds with the state government.