EPC DEALS DRIVE VINDHYA TELE PROFITS

The company goes big on water supply and irrigation turnkey projects to rise 208 ranks in The Next 500 list.

- Anup Jayaram

IT WAS IN 2014 that Rewa, Madhya Pradesh-based Vindhya Telelinks, which had all along been a telecom equipment manufacturing company making jelly-filled cables, optic fibre cables and specialty cables bagged a ₹1,036 crore order from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) for procurement, supply, trenching, laying, installation and testing of an optical fibre network on a turnkey basis for India’s defence services. That opened an entirely new dimension for the company.

Today, EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) is driving business. “Our customers, the telcos, were not happy with us being just suppliers. They wanted turnkey solutions. That’s when we set up the project division to support the manufacturing division. We entered new areas to meet rising demand for turnkey projects,” says Sandeep Chawla, president & CEO, Vindhya Telelinks. “We started diversifying. We started with telecom and got into power distribution, sewerage, system integration, oil & water pipelines and irrigation. It has been good for us strategically,” says Chawla.