Indus Towers plans to be $2 bn company

Telecom Tower firm Indus Towers today said it plans to add nearly 5,000 telecom tower every year for the next five years and expects to be a over $2 billion company in the current fiscal.

"We are planning to add nearly 5,000 telecom towers every year in the next five years and we expect to be a $2 billion company in revenue terms," Indus Towers, a joint venture company of Bharti Group, Idea Group and Vodafone Essar, CEO B S Shantharaju said.

Vodafone Essar and Bharti Group hold 42 per cent stake each in the company and Idea Group has the remaining 16 per cent stake.

The company, which has operations in 16 out of the 22 telecom circles, currently owns more than 1.1 lakh towers.

"The cost comes on an average at Rs 23 lakh per tower for installing them,"  Shantharaju said.

Besides, Indus Towers has reached to the 2-lakh tenancies mark in less than three-years, becoming the first company in the world to touch that feat. While it has 73,800 tenancies in 2008.

The company, which has customers like Bharti Airtel, Loop Telecom, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular among others, expects to reach nearly 90 per cent teledensity its operational circles in the coming five-year.

"In the next five years, we expects to reach nearly 90 per cent teledensity from the existing nearly 58 per cent," Shantharaju added.

The company is also taking many initiatives like solar-powered telecom towers as a part of it low cost energy saving technologies.

Shantharaju further added, "Currently, nearly 84 per cent of the telecom towers are being used by the joint venture companies of Indus Tower and about 16 per cent by the new telecom service providers."