Rolta sees $2-bn sales from nuke projects deals

Rolta India and its joint venture partner Stone & Webster expect to bag $2 billion (Rs 8,500 crore) engineering and design orders for nuclear energy in seven years after India signs the civil nuclear accord with the US.

K K Singh, chairman and CEO, Rolta said the company’s exclusive tie-up with Stone & Webster brings to the fore its capability for setting up nuclear power plants. “Since its a 50:50 JV, we see a business opportunity of Rs 4,250 crore for Rolta over the next seven years.

Our focus will be the engineering and design aspect of the projects. It is said that almost $70-80 billion investments will be made to generate 40,000 MW of power through nuclear plants. Of this engineering will be 5-7 per cent (including safety design), which means a market of $5 billion,” he says.

Besides Shaw Group the parent of Stone&Webster, has 25 per cent stake in Westinghouse Electric—supplier of fuel, technology and equipment to the commercial nuclear electric power industry. Being one of the three major nuclear reactor manufacturer in the world (the other two are GE and Areva), Singh believes that Westinghouse will also bid for these projects in India.

The company is already working close with the Indian defence sector and has nearly 90 per cent of the market share in the space of defence mapping, which is pegged at $40-50 million. Currently, the company has revenue of $30 million from this space. Singh feels that its JV with Thales will further catapult the company’s growth in this segment.

For the fiscal 2008, Singh wants to focus on the growth of its Geospatial business, which is already 50 per cent of its revenue. “We are looking at an acquisition in the geospatial technologies and are in talks with a firm in North America. This acquisition will make us provider of Geospatial technologies worldwide,” says Singh. The company is also eyeing the huge mapping projects that respective State Governments of India are coming up with.

Singh is also confident that the company will join the $1 billion club by 2010 and is looking at both organic and inorganic growth. “We are growing at healthy rate of 40 per cent and this give us the desired momentum. Moreover, we have acquired three firms and this has given us a base of 3,000 customers.

This brings in an immense opportunity to sell,” said Singh. Rolta was recently included in the Standard & Poor (S&P) Global Challenger list. One of the two firms from India of the 300 mid-sized companies worldwide.