My Target Is To Have 10,000 Towers

The rise and rise of SuyogTelematics continues un-abated on the BSE's SME platform. The Mumbai-headquartered telecom tower company's stock was listed on the bourse at Rs 25 in January 2014 and is currently ruling at a whopping Rs 470 apiece.

Suyog's winning streak on the stock exchange is backed by the company's strong performance over the past few years. The company's revenue (Rs 43.75 crore) has doubled year on year in the past two years, while its net profit (Rs 12.06 crore) has risen by three-fold and four-fold in FY15 and FY16 respectively.

Shivshankar Lature, the managing director of Suyog Telematics, is naturally impressed with his company's growth. Unwilling to remain complacent, the first-generation entrepreneur has set an ambitious target for Suyog's future growth. In an interview with Amit Brahmabhatt, Mr Lature, who recently got Suyog to acquire New Delhi-based Nisa Industrial Services, talks about the industry, his company's growth strategies and targets.

Would you briefly sum up Suyog's over two-decade-old journey?

The idea of starting a telecom tower venture came to me during a discussion with my friends in our hostel of M S Bidve Engineering College in Latur. We were in the last year of civil engineering degree course. BSNL, which was then called the DoT (Department of Telecommunication), had floated a tender to erect a tower in a nearby village. I decided to put in Rs 10,000 as the first capital for the venture, drawing the money set aside for my engineering course. Our company won the tender, and we set up our first tower in Sakri in 1991. From then on, there was no looking back.

In 1995, Suyog was selected as a sub-contractor of BSNL to set up telecom towers in village panchayats across Maharashtra. We built more than 10,000 towers, ranging from 15 to 80 metres, between 1995 and 2000 under a scheme to connect villages with telephones. When the scheme was wound up in 2000, we were asked to dismantle the towers that we had set up. Suyog thus gained rich experience in the field of telecom towers. By then, mobile phones had hit the market and were becoming popular. We were soon approached by private mobile companies to set up telecom towers and related infrastructure. Today, we are one of the country's leading telecom infrastructure providers.

How has Suyog registered brilliant financial performance year after year?