MTL close to buy German co's Indian subsidiary

India's leading electronic manufacturing services provider, Mobile Telecommunications, is close to sealing the acquisition of Pune-based Wieler International Electronic (WIE), by end-this year.

WIE is a subsidiary of Germany-based DIGISOUND-Electronic GmbH.

WIE, located at Shirwal, Pune, is the market-leader in the manufacturing of thick film hybrid micro-circuits in India and has established capabilities in high-tech electronic critical applications.

"We will be acquiring WIE by this year-end for around $6-million," Mobile Telecommunications (MTL) Chairman and Managing Director Anil Vedmetha said here.

MTL, which has a state-of-the-art Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) unit at Nashik, is planning to expand the same by six times by March 2010. This will entail an investment of around Rs 7.5-crore, he said.

"Currently, we are producing 16,500 units of EMS per hour but post-expansion we will be producing around 1,00,000 units per hour," Vedmetha said, adding that "the opportunity in this sector is tremendous as every five minutes there is one telecom tower being erected in India and it needs equipment like radio and microwaves."

So far only three companies manufacture these products in the world, including US-based Trango and Motorola. However, Trango dominates the market with a 60 per cent share.

MTL had recently entered into an exclusive agreement with Prologix LLC for distribution of Trango Systems USA and Bridgewave communications products in India.

With this, MTL is projecting a sales of around Rs 500-crore in the next 2-3 years in the country.

Vedmetha said that "the growing number of telecom towers and the advent of 3G has opened a great opportunity for microwave, wireless networks and radios. We are hopeful to capture a 10 per cent market share of the Rs 2,000-crore microwave and radio market in the first year which is growing at 50 per cent per annum."

MTL has been providing Electronic Manufacturing Services to its customers since 1995 and clocked a net profit of Rs 1.5-crore last fiscal.

"We are eyeing a net profit of Rs 6-crore in FY10," he said.

MTL also manufactures cable modems, digital projectors, graphic cards, mobile handset circuits, network interface cards, DVD players, PC mother boards, railway signalling equipment, set-top boxes and static electronic energy meters.