Centre appoints Hudco chief K L Dhingra as new ITI CMD

The Centre has appointed K L Dhingra, earlier the chairman and managing director (CMD) of Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd (Hudco) as the new CMD of state-owned telecom equipment manufacturer, Indian Telephone Industries (ITI Ltd.). The appointment of Dhingra, a finance professional, is considered to be strategic as the loss-making PSU is earnestly trying to make a turn-around, as mandated by the government in fiscal 2011-12.

A masters in Business Management from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) under the Delhi University, Dhingra is presently the vice chairman of SCOPE, an apex body for the public enterprises. He has also served as director of many other public sector undertakings (PSUs) including the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation Limited.

The post of CMD of the Bangalore-headquartered company was lying vacant since 31 March this year following the retirement of S K Chatterjee who was serving as the CMD of the company. The search for a CMD outside the company begun in November last year, as Ravi Agarwal who is presently the Director (Production) of ITI Ltd., is also set to retire in the end of this month.

The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PSEB) which is in charge of the selection of the CMDs of PSUs in India, is understood to have selected Dhingra based on finance background as well as track record. In his over two-year stint in Hudco, Dhingra was instrumental in steering the company towards new milestones in terms of loan sanctions, profitability, reduction of non-performing assets (NPA) and improvement in the credit ratings.

In the fiscal ended March 31, 2010, ITI has achieved a turnover of Rs 4732.43 crore as per the provisional resu-

lts with a year-on-year growth of nearly 271 pe cent, the highest ever revenue the company had ever registered. In the ongoing fiscal, the Government has set a target before ITI to achieve a turnover of Rs 8,000 crore.